systematic review of telemedicine projects in colombia

AALBORG UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

MASTER PROGRAMDEVELOPMENT AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Master Thesis

Systematic Review ofTelemedicine Projects

in Colombia

Carlos Rey Moreno

September 29th 2008

Contents

Contents 1

1 Introduction 5

1.1 Problem Formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1.2 Document Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1.3 Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2 Methodology 13

2.1 Search Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.1.1 Scientific Information Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.1.1.1 Search Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2.1.1.2 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.1.2 Search Engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.1.3 Criteria for Expert Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

2.2 Assessment Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

2.2.1 Classification of projects according to indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.2.1.1 Feasibility Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.2.1.2 Impact Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2.2.2 Assessment of projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

2.2.3 Criteria for the presentation of results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

1

3 Results 27

3.1 Places where Materials for Description have been Recalled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

3.2 Description of Telemedicine Initiatives Recalled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

3.2.1 Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

3.2.2 GIT-Universidad de Caldas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

3.2.3 Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

3.2.4 Fundación Cardiovascular de Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

3.2.5 Subprogram EHAS - Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

3.2.6 GNTT-Universidad del Cauca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

3.2.7 Facultad de Ingeniería Electrónica-Universidad del Cauca . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

3.2.8 T@lemed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

3.2.9 Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

3.2.10 SaludCoop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

3.2.11 GIB-Universidad EAFIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

3.2.12 Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

3.2.13 Hospital Universitario La Samaritana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

3.2.14 Ecopetrol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

3.2.15 Vision Technology Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

3.2.16 Cardiobip Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

3.2.17 GITEM-Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

3.2.18 GIB–Universidad de los Andes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

3.2.19 Facultad de Medicina-Universidad de Antioquía . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

3.2.20 EIT-Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

3.2.21 Asociación Colombiana de Medicina, Informática y Telesalud . . . . . . . . . . 70

3.2.22 Esoft Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

3.2.23 Dr. Díaz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

3.2.24 ITMS-Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

4 Analysis 75

4.1 Analysis of the projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

4.1.1 Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

4.1.2 GIT-Universidad de Caldas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

4.1.3 Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

4.1.4 Fundación Cardiovascular de Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

4.1.5 Subprogram EHAS - Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.1.6 GNTT-Universidad del Cauca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

4.1.7 Facultad de Ingeniería Electrónica-Universidad del Cauca . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

4.1.8 T@lemed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

4.1.9 Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

4.1.10 SaludCoop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

4.1.11 GIB-Universidad EAFIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

4.1.12 Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

4.1.13 Hospital Universitario La Samaritana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

4.1.14 Ecopetrol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

4.1.15 Vision Technology Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

4.1.16 Cardiobip Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

4.1.17 GITEM-Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

4.1.18 GIB–Universidad de los Andes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

4.1.19 Facultad de Medicina-Universidad de Antioquía . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

4.1.20 EIT-Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

4.1.21 Asociación Colombiana de Medicina, Informática y Telesalud . . . . . . . . . . 85

4.1.22 Esoft Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

4.1.23 Dr. Díaz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

4.1.24 ITMS-Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

4.2 Summary of the analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

5 Conclusions 87

A Reference Framework 89

A.1 Definitions of the telemedicine terms used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

A.1.1 Classification as a function of time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

A.1.2 Classification as a function of the kind of service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

A.1.3 Classification as a function of the medical specialty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

4

A.1.4 Main international telemedicine standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

A.2 Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

A.2.1 Health care System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

A.2.2 Telecommunications Infraestructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

A.2.3 Telemedicine Legislation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

B Contacts with Institutions Involved 101

C Contact Information of Institutions Involved 103

D Glossary 113

Bibliography 117

1Introduction

Saving the life of another human being is an inherent characteristic of mankind. Since time began,

man has helped his fellow man when he was in trouble. Society has progressed from binding the bites

of wild animals with herbs and wild plants and we now have a very advanced civilisation which uses

state of the art technology to help others, in both immediate aid and in preventative medicine.

Progress in technology and telecommunication has introduced major changes in the way health

services are provided. Care can now be delivered directly regardless of distance and time, through

what is known as ‘telemedicine’. This concept refers to a medical discipline where two or more

implicated agents, which are geographically apart, communicate. These agents could be a doctor and

a patient, a doctor and another doctor, or a doctor, a patient, information and data related to both [50].

Telemedicine, as a praxis which uses information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve

health care processes, began many years ago, when NASA tracked astronaut’s vital signs by remote

control in the 1950’s [56].

Deployment of telemedicine systems may be expensive. They require specialised hardware such

as robotised microscopes, digital stethoscopes, digitaliser cards or videocameras and related software

that allows the user to control them in a friendly way. Many years ago finding these devices was

not an easy task, nowadays, through advances in ICT, they have become more popular, making them

more accessible.

Despite technological difficulties and some resistance from many patients and professionals to

the shift in the traditional paradigm of health attention, telemedicine has been demonstrated to have

a great impact on health. It avoids unnecessary journeys for patients to the specialised attention

centre, reducing costs and risks associated with movement, not only of patients, but of health care

professionals as well. It also diminishes hospitalisation periods, facilitates information exchange

5

6 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

among institutions and promotes continuous capacitation of health care professionals. Furthermore,

it contributes to the improvement, in attention and diagnosis, of patients living in isolated and remote

places [75].

Within the globalisation process, developing countries are increasingly adopting this technology.

In Latin America they are used in an attempt to reduce social inequalities and improve accessibility to

the health system for people living in less developed and distant areas [50]. This is because, in Latin

America health care professionals are concentrated mainly in urban areas, where all levels of health

care assistance are also located. At the same time, geographically isolated areas, where a bigger

portion of the vulnerable population is located, are attended by health care professionals who require

support and guidance when dealing with difficult cases [76]. Therefore, telemedicine is expected to

bring many benefits to the health care system in Latin American countries.

However, telemedicine projects depend greatly on the means and available resources. In many

Latin American countries, communications are poorly developed, hindering access to the aforemen-

tioned depressed areas. Furthermore, power infrastructure is mainly concentrated on urban areas and

the isolated areas seldom have power supply of any kind. In addition to this, ICT penetration and

usage is very low, particularly within the health sector, thus, making it very difficult for telemedicine

programs to succeed [100].

Within this context, if introducing new technologies in complex health care systems, such as those

described above, it is not planned and carried out carefully, the system can deteriorate as a whole, and

the outcome will be very far from those stated at the beginning of the project [92]. One of the main

causes of the failure of many telemedicine projects occurs when development is centered more on

the technology used instead of beneficiary and health care professional needs [92]. As indicated in

a report about telemedicine, one faces the paradox of having a technological solution looking for

a health problem to solve [31]. Even so, there are very few studies which evaluate telemedicine

projects carried out in Latin American countries and even less which evaluate their appropriateness

and capacity to solve health care problems in certain areas or regions. These evaluations contribute

with real information on how to maximise resources for the projects to succeed, which may help the

continuity of similar initiatives.

Therefore, it is important to review all the telemedicine projects carried out until now in Latin

America, in order to learn their virtues and failures. This will make future telemedicine projects

aware of what difficulties may they find, which outcomes may they expect or whose support they may

1.1 Problem Formulation 7

count on.

1.1 Problem Formulation

In order to reach a better understanding on telemedicine initiatives in Latin America, this docu-

ment will be written around the following problem formulation:

Are there successful experiences regarding telemedicine projects in Latin America which are

recommended for replication in other areas of the region?

1.2 Document Outline

To answer the problem formulation, this document will be outlined as follows:

This chapter will end with a description of the research design used in this document. Justifica-

tion of decisions made in order to fulfill the standards for systematic reviews will be given. It will

also explain the decisions made for the selection of Colombia, as the country to be analysed in this

document.

In Chapter 2, the search and assessment strategy of the systematic review report will be introduced.

The search strategy contains a description of the steps taken to review all the telemedicine projects

carried out in the selected country, it specifies the exclusion and inclusion criteria of projects, and it

indicates the criteria for choosing a key expert who will determine whether a project actually exists.

The assessment strategy provides the tools used to categorise the projects: it will describe which

indicators are going to be considered important when analysing data found and it will explain a nine-

level categorisation which will serve to classify the level of evidence of those data. This will let the

reader have an idea of the strategies used when applying them to the next chapter.

Chapter 3 will present the results of the systematic review, showing all the telemedicine initiatives

carried out in Colombia. After that, Chapter 4 will present an analysis of the projects, considering

the indicators described in the previous chapter, and classifying data regarding them according to the

evidence encountered.

In Chapter 5 all the ideas outlined in the previous chapter will be collected and summed up in

recommendations for future telemedicine projects carried out in Latin American countries.


Four appendixes has been also added to this document. Appendix A will introduce the context

where the telemedicine projects take place. It will describe the health care system of Colombia, it will

present its telecommunication infrastructure for developing telemedicine projects and it will identify

the laws that regulate telemedicine practice. In addition to this, a reference framework will be pre-

sented, defining all the telemedicine terms which will be used along the document. In Appendix ??,

all the interviews with the responsibles of the telemedicine initiatives found will be presented. Ap-

pendix C will show the contact information of the people interviewed. Finally in Appendix D, a

translation in English of the names of the institutions mentioned in this document is provided.

1.3 Research Design

The project is built around a systematic review design. The Centre of Research and Dissemina-

tion (CRD) describes it as a scientific tool which provides information by “identifying, appraising and

summarizing the results of otherwise unmanageable quantities of research” [18]1. To do so, system-

atic reviews focus on the localisation and analysis of conducted studies, sometimes with conflicting

findings, to generate objective conclusions based on the evaluation and synthesis of the existing evi-

dence.

For a review to be conducted professionally, the first step should be to establish whether it is

required, by searching for historical and ongoing reviews on the same topic [32]. Two studies with a

similar purpose were found: [115] and [72]. The first is a study conducted jointly by the International

Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Pan American Health Organization (PHO) published in

December 2003. Despite publishing a book and an interactive CD-ROM with very useful information

on investment in telecommunications and health, its contents are not related to those stated in the

objectives. It lacks detailed information on specific projects and there is no identification of positive

or negative practice. Furthermore, as it was published in 2003, most of the information collected will

be from at least one year prior to publication, so other telemedicine projects may have been carried out

since then. Similarly, the second review identified was conducted in 2001 by the Organismo Andino

de Salud (ORAS) jointly with PHO. So, although it contains very useful information and identifies

many telemedicine projects carried out in the Andean region, an update of it’s contents is needed.

This update is important since telecommunication and health techniques have changed greatly in the

1Phase 0, p. 4.

1.3 Research Design 9

last ten years and therefore different recommendations for telemedicine practice may appear when

conducting this systematic review.

The quality of a systematic review is directly related to the use of methods which minimise bias.

This can be achieved by being “systematic both in the identification and evaluation of materials,

objective in its interpretation and reproducible in the conclusions” [32]2.

In this document, identification of telemedicine projects will be carried out through an intricate

methodology described in Section 2.1. This includes all the steps which will be followed in the

process, from the search of relevant articles in specialist journals, to the contact of key experts on the

topic for verifying findings. Similarly, evaluation of all materials found will be done systematically.

The process will follow a protocol, described in Section 2.2. It will classify materials according to

key indicators which will be then measured according to their level of scientific evidence. Thus, both

the process of identification and the evaluation carried out in this thesis guarantees a high degree of

specification.

Although the majority of indicators are carefully described and the level of scientific evidence

in the studies where they are found is categorized in a nine-level table, leading to high objectivity

on the decisions made, some factors of subjectivity may appear which I have to be aware of. In

professional systematic reviews there are a team of experts in charge of the evaluation of the studies

to minimise bias [18], however, in this document all the decisions were made by one reviewer alone.

To combat this weakness great effort has been made in the definition of the indicators and evidence

levels. Another factor of subjectivity revolves around the qualitative assessment of some projects.

When evaluating feasibility and impact of telemedicine projects in developing countries, some factors,

such as empowerment, are difficult to measure. Nevertheless they have to be considered since they

offer insight into social and emotional changes. According to the CRD, this is not to be considered a

weakness, because “there is a potential from qualitative research to enhance the quality and salience

of systematic reviews” [18]3.

Reproducibility in the conclusions deals with a key concept of research design: reliability. A

research is reliable if one follows the same procedures described in this document and always arrives

at the same conclusion. Therefore, a very detailed description of the methods, justifying all the

decisions made will help to reproduce the conclusions reached in this review. As it was pointed out

2p.43Phase 2, p. 5.


above, both search and assessment strategies are explained in depth in their respective sections. For

example, in the search strategy a list of the publications where studies could have been identified has

been shown, and search filters used to recall them specified. Furthermore, including and excluding

criteria of materials have been enumerated, in order to achieve the goal of replicability: “minimise

errors and biases in a study” [126]4.

However, according to Lewin, a study “can be reliable (always generate the same result) but not

valid (not measure the intended concept)” [73]5. In order to lend validity to answers to the research

question, two main concepts have to be taken into account: internal and external validity. Internal

validity refers to data analysis of the project and causal relationships need to be established, while

external validity refers to generalisation of the results obtained in a study.

In this review a high level of internal validity is needed to support the recommendations made

on good and bad practices within telemedicine projects. However, the internal validity of this review

is highly related to the one of the assessed studies. Although it is reasonable to establish a causal

relationship between positive indicators, such as impact on patient health and telemedicine project

intervention, it is impossible for the reviewer to assert whether intervening variables taken into ac-

count within each study were all the variables at play. Hence, I acknowledge a certain level of bias on

the recommendations since they are based on the internal validity of the retrieved studies. However,

this bias has been minimised using different steps. Recommendations for supporting any practice

followed in a telemedicine project were made by using the nine-level categorisation according to the

level of scientific evidence. Thus, those results which were obtained by means of exhaustive analysis,

such as meta-analysis and therefore, with a high degree of internal validity, were given more weight

when making recommendations, than for example descriptive studies, which do not allow any rec-

ommendation to be made. The other mechanism used to minimise bias was to contact people of the

telemedicine project assessed in order to interview them and recall any key information missing from

the studies. So, despite a certain bias has to be acknowledged regarding the internal validity of the

results obtained through this study, measures have been taken to minimise it.

Since the scope of this review (assessing all the telemedicine projects carried out in Latin America)

is very broad, and the time framework to carry out this work is very short, one Latin American country

has been selected as model example in order to be able to relate the findings to the rest of the countries.

4p. 37.5p 216.

1.3 Research Design 11

This will be difficult to do since no country is equal to another and neither is a telemedicine project.

However, there are some elements such as scarcity of specialists, limited resources, geographical

difficulties with internal communications, lack of telecommunication infrastructure in large areas of

the country and big inequalities between urban and rural health services, which are common to many

Latin American countries [72].

The country selected is Colombia. It has been chosen because since Latin American countries

started attending international telemedicine and telehealth in 2001, such as the Annual Meeting of the

American Telemedicine Association or the International Conference of the International Society of

Telemedicine, Colombia, together with Brazil, has always attended [118]. Brazil was not chosen be-

cause the difference in the language would have brought about difficulties when looking for projects.

This last decision can also be considered a weakness of the analysis of which I have to be aware of.

Furthermore, as stated in [115]6 “Colombia can be considered without any doubt one of locomotors of

telemedicine in the region”, due to its dynamism at different levels: public, private and academic sec-

tors. Then, although other countries may have more and better projects carried out recently, Colombia

has older experiences, which can be analysed once the projects have finished and their outcomes can

be assessed, thus providing a bigger number of elements for analysis. Therefore, the recommenda-

tions from the review of telemedicine projects carried out in Colombia could be applied to the rest of

Latin American countries, ensuring a high degree of external validity.

6CD-ROM accompanying the book. In the section General Information in the chapter about Colombia.

2Methodology

In this chapter both the search and the assessment strategies used in this study are described in

detail.

2.1 Search Strategy

The process of retrieving projects is one of the most important phases of this study. In order to

use reliable sources, it would be advisable to use only scientific electronic databases, such as LILACS

or MEDLINE, which recall articles from indexed journals. However, it is widely known that there

is a lack of articles published in developing countries. According to Fisher’s World Almanac [124],

countries classified as industrialised (those with a high Human Development Index (HDI)1) produce

97% of the telemedicine publications and the other countries just 3%. According to the Journal of

Telemedicine and Telecare [90], after analysing all the indexed articles in MEDLINE from January

1964 to July 2003, the following comments were noted:

• There is a high level of correlation between the publications per number of inhabitants and the

Gross National Product of a country (r=0,69; P=0,0001).

• There is a high level of correlation between the publications per number of inhabitants and the

number of Personal Computers per 1000 inhabitants of a country (r=0,73; P=0,0001).

• There is negative correlation between the publications per number of inhabitants and the HDI

of a country (r=-0,60; P=0,0001).

1http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/indices/

13

http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/indices/

14 CHAPTER 2. METHODOLOGY

• There is a high number of articles (63%) from industrialised English speaking countries (United

States of America, United Kingdom and Australia)

Thus, searching for telemedicine projects only in indexed journals from scientific electronic databases

may lead to bias in their identification process. It is possible that articles referring to telemedicine

projects in Latin America may not have been published in English speaking indexed journals.

Therefore, other non indexed documents, such as articles which are referenced in quoted projects

as well as other scientific databases, have been considered to enable a wider search for telemedicine

projects. However, as stated in an article in The Economist, “publishers generally prefer research

that has a positive result” [4]2, so it is likely that many negative experiences have not been published,

leading to another bias when highlighting bad practice.

Taking everything into account, it is necessary to look for information somewhere else. It was

decided that the World Wide Web (www) would be used for this complementary task, after acknowl-

edging all its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, many non-indexed journals can be

accessed through the www. Besides, many institutions use the www for the diffusion of information

regarding their projects, since it is faster, easier and cheaper. The www also offers the possibility of

making contact with the authors of the project, which could further the search for accurate informa-

tion.

On the other hand, there are many irrelevant websites and related articles that have to be reviewed,

whilst looking for relevant material, which can then be inadvertently missed. To solve these problems,

a search algorithm proposed by Diego Moñino in [37] will be used. Another problem posed by the

www is the difficulty in contrasting the findings. This would lead to a lack of reliability in the sources,

however, this methodology will only be used for identifying the projects. Later in the project, authors

will be contacted to verify the information quoted.

The last step is to be sure that the affirmations made in this study are correct, hence, an expert

from either the Ministry of Communications or the Minitry of health will be contacted to confirm

every hit.

2p. 2

2.1 Search Strategy 15

2.1.1 Scientific Information Sources

A systematic review of the articles published until May 2008 in international indexed scientific

journals specialised in telemedicine has been undertaken. To do this, the following electronic re-

sources have been used:

• Telemedicine Information Exchange (TIE). “An unbiased and all-inclusive platform for in-

formation on telemedicine and telehealth” [110].

• MEDLINE. It is a component of the North American National Library of Medicine, which

contains references to more than 17 millions articles published in biomedic journals and news-

papers [79].

• LILACS. This is a component of the Virtual Library of Health of the PHO. It aims at facili-

tating the collection, selection, description and indexing of health articles written in Spanish or

Portuguese [74].

• IEEExplore. This delivers “full text access to the world’s highest quality technical literature

in electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics” [64]. In particular, it is worth

mentioning the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, the Telemedicine Journal and e-Health

and the International Journal of Medical Informatics.

• Cochrane Library. This contains high quality, independent evidence from systematic reviews,

clinical trials, which informs health care decision makers [22].

• Current Contents. This is an electronic database which provides single source key information

from journal books and Web literature [34].

• Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL): This is a compre-

hensive and versatile guide to the literature of nursing and subsequent allied health informa-

tion [21].

• CUIDEN. It includes the scientific production of the iberoamerican nursing specialities [33].

Non indexed documents have been also considered. First of all references found in the consulted

articles have been reviewed. Furthermore, key articles have been retrieved using the “related articles”


tool of MEDLINE [79]. The Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) has also been consulted.

The centre “undertakes high quality systematic reviews that evaluate the effects of health and social

care intervention and the delivery and organisation of health care” [17]. Using the Cochrane Library,

the reports of the Iberoamerican Agency of Health Technologies, the list of publications of the Health

Technology Assessment (HTA) and the Economic Evaluation Database of National Health Service

of the UK (NHS EED), which contains a list of articles about economic evaluation of interventions

in health assistance, have been also consulted [22]. The Scientific Electronic Library Online (Scielo)

has been also reviewed, the library allows access to the literature of the scientific community of Latin

America and the Caribbean [104].

In addition to this, abstracts of the proceedings of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) [2]

and the International Society for Telemedicine (ISFT) [66] have been considered. Finally, articles

found on the website of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) [101] and the Associa-

tion of Telehealth Service Providers (ATSP) [8] have been reviewed.

2.1.1.1 Search Criteria

In order to search for the articles in the sources indicated above, the following key words and their

equivalents in Spanish have been used:

1. Colombia and telemedicine

2. Colombian and telemedicine

3. Colombia and telehealth

4. Colombian and telehealth

5. Colombia and ehealth

6. Colombian and ehealth

7. Colombia and e-health

8. Colombian and e-health

These very broad searching criteria are required because, as previously indicated, there are very

few published articles from the developing countries.

2.1 Search Strategy 17

2.1.1.2 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

Inclusion Criteria: Articles describing telemedicine projects, programmes, and systems installed

in Colombia and research activities carried out there.

Type of studies: systematic reviews, large and small sample randomized controlled trials, non-

randomized controlled prospective studies, cohort studies, case studies, non-controlled trials and de-

scriptive studies.

In this categorisation meta-analysis and show very good evidence, controlled and small sample

randomized controlled trials and nonrandomized controlled prospective studies (multicentric) show

good evidence, observational studies (analytic and transversal) show fair evidence, and descriptive

studies and non-controlled trials show poor evidence.

Exclusion criteria: Articles that are not written in English or Spanish.

2.1.2 Search Engines

Besides the use of scientific electronic databases, the use of search engines has been considered.

The goal is to retrieve useful information about telemedicine projects, programmes and systems not

included in specialised journals and websites. Furthermore, this method will be used to retrieve

contact information about people related to the telemedicine in each country. Possible contacts are

defined as those people related to:

• a whole telemedicine project or programme.

• a project or programme containing telemedicine activities.

• a change in the health management process which uses ICT in an innovative way.

• studies about telemedicine.

• telemedicine education, articles or experiences.

According to an extensive analysis of the different search engines carried out by Moñino in [37],

Google was chosen as the engine which has more quality links and documents to offer. However,

when using this kind of search engine, the number of references obtained increases because key

words offer more flexibility. Therefore, for a faster and more efficient search it is necessary to put the

possible combinations in order and proceed from the more restrictive to the more generic.


The list of key words used in this study3 and its order of use is as follows:

1. “telemedicine in Colombia”

2. “telemedicine project” Colombia site:.org OR site:.co

3. “telemedicine project” Colombia

4. telemedicine project Colombia site:.org OR site:.co

5. telemedicine project Colombia

6. “telemedicine congress” Colombia

7. telemedicine congress Colombia site:.org OR site:.co

8. telemedicine congress Colombia

9. “health minister” telemedicine Colombia site:.co OR site:.gob

10. minister medicine|health telemedicine Colombia site:.co OR site:.gob

11. “health minister” telemedicine Colombia

12. “health minister” Colombia

13. “faculty of medicine” telemedicine Colombia

14. university OR faculty telemedicine Colombia site:.org OR site:.co

15. university OR faculty telemedicine Colombia

When using any combination of these key words the following basic rules will be followed:

• In each consultation a maximum of 10 references will be consulted. When reviewing any of

them, it will never go deeper than 4 levels of navigation.

• If in the 4 first references the same information is repeated, without contributing any new

telemedicine project or contact, a filter to the reiterative information will be used (In Google

using the option “-”)3As the selected country is composed mainly by Spanish speakers, the key words will be the Spanish translation of the

indicated ones.

2.2 Assessment Strategy 19

• If after one consultation less than 5 pages are retrieved and from them it is impossible to recall

4 different telemedicine projects or contacts, the next combination of key words will be used.

Once the search process for Colombia has finished, the process of contacting the people relevant

to the study begins. Since previous experience with email contacts revealed that many people do not

like to spend time answering written surveys, the telephone is the tool used in this study. Therefore,

if there is information about a project but there is no reference to the author, then a further search is

done.

Each time a new project is added to the list, a new search is carried out by entering its name as

key word “and Colombia”, and first ten hits are considered. This way a better insight about a project

was acquired before carrying out any interview.

When there is reliable information that a contact is related to a telemedicine project, a first phone

contact will be established to discard those projects or programs which were never carried out. Once a

list of the real telemedicine projects undertaken in a country is created, a second round of calls estab-

lishes contact with the author of each project. In this second conversation, deeper project information

is requested, including any available evaluation of the project. If, on the other hand, the contact is not

directly related to a telemedicine project, information about projects and key people will be requested.

2.1.3 Criteria for Expert Selection

As it has been mentioned an expert from either the Ministry of Communications or from the

Ministry of health will be contacted for corroborating the findings. Expert will be selected from

contacts provided by people interviewed. The only constrain for his or her election is that he/she can

not be related with any of the projects analysed.

2.2 Assessment Strategy

Projects detected through the search strategy described in the previous section will be classified

according to the indicators detailed in the next section. After classification, information found will be

assessed according to the nine-level categorisation presented in last section of this chapter.


2.2.1 Classification of projects according to indicators

The introduction of telemedicine systems requires precise planning. The impact of that intro-

duction depends greatly on the way it has been carried out. Before introducing a technology it is

of paramount importance to carry out feasibility studies in order to assess the needs of the user and

thereby deploy the correct and most effective technology to match the requirement. Furthermore,

once the project has commenced, it is necessary to obtain measurements of the real effects caused by

the introduction of the selected telemedicine system. Both feasibility and impact data of the projects

recalled have been retrieved according to the indicators described in the following section. These in-

dicators have been selected from [77], a reference book in Latin America for evaluating telemedicine

systems.

2.2.1.1 Feasibility Indicators

Within the projects found, information related to the technical feasibility of the telemedicine sys-

tem used has been retrieved. This information could be related to the technical effectiveness of the

system, and to reliability, shown as security in a system and to ease of use. Furthermore, information

related to institutional feasibility when introducing a telemedicine system, shown as acceptance and

satisfaction from people involved, has also been recovered. Finally, within the economic feasibility

subsection, evidence about economic sustainability of the telemedicine projects selected has been

retrieved. Table 2.1 presents a reference of the feasibility indicators considered.

Table 2.1: Feasibility Indicators

(1) Effectiveness

Technical (2) Reliability

Feasibility (3) Ease of use

Institutional (4) Acceptance

Economic (5) Sustainability


Technical Feasibility Indicators

(1) Effectiveness. This indicator will show whether technical features of a telemedicine system

are enough for providing the health service they are designed to support. Articles or data which in-

clude comparisons between data obtained through telemedicine systems and those obtained through

“traditional” methods have been recalled. Articles relating to whether or not the quality of the video

conference or telephony systems were good enough to allow communication between people or de-

vices involved in the telemedicine activity have also been selected.

(2) Reliability. In this document this term is related to two different variables: robustness and

security of the system. The robustness of a system means that the ratio of system breakdown per

time unit is low. In this case, in articles or data referring to a number of failures, the mean times

(eg. reparation mean time), have been retrieved. Security of the system refers to the avoidance of

undesired side effects caused by the use of a telemedicine system, therefore data or articles including

results about the security of the system, such as technical barriers to the introduction of impossible

data have been also recovered. To consider this indicator evaluated it is necessary to state within the

information found that no failure has occurred.

(3) Ease of use. This indicator makes reference to the simplicity of handling the telemedicine

system introduced and its adaptation to the daily work in the institutions where it has been deployed. A

key factor for improving the ease of use of a system is the design of appropriate initial training courses

and follow-up refresher courses to allow the beneficiaries to use the system correctly. Therefore both

data related to the user’s opinion of the simplicity of using the system and information referring to

the training strategies have been considered. The opinion of non-contact managers or supervisors has

not been recorded.

Institutional Feasibility Indicators

(4) Acceptance. One of the major problems when trying to guarantee the continuity of telemedicine

projects comes from the assertion of institutional will. On many occasions support from health au-

thorities for introducing a telemedicine system is not obtained, which gives no value to the technical

feasibility evaluation, since the project cannot go forward. In others, the problem is similar when

health workers or patients are not willing to use the system introduced. So it is important to recall

all data showing evidence that patients, health workers and health authorities were satisfied or at least


accepted the introduction of the telemedicine system. Furthermore, articles or information related

to the expansion of a project to other institutions or areas, and those concerning opposition to the

adoption or continuation of the system have been considered.

Economic feasibility Indicators

(5) Sustainability. Sometimes studies regarding economic feasibility and economic impact of

a project are easily confused. In this document, while economic impact seeks to include all results

comparing cost and benefit for any of the agents involved, sustainability seeks to group all data con-

cerning evidence that a telemedicine system that has been deployed, can be maintained by the health

institution without an excessive economic effort. Therefore, studies or information regarding instal-

lation and operation costs of a communication system or maintenance costs of the devices installed

have been taken into account.

2.2.1.2 Impact Indicators

In this section the emphasis is given to the external impact of the introduction of a telemedicine

system. Information related to the impact on the clinical process, patient health and accessibility to

a higher quality health care system have all been considered. Furthermore, evaluations of the cost-

benefit ratio which show the economic impact on the different agents involved have been recalled.

All indicators considered within this section are presented in Table 2.2.

Table 2.2: Impact Indicators

On the clinical process (6) Improvement of diagnostic capacity

(7) Improvement in the organisation

On the patient health (8) Utility

Impact On the accessibility (9) Variation on the feeling of isolation

(10) Higher quality health care system

Economic (11) Effects on the health care centre

12) Effects on the national health care system


Impact on the clinical process indicators

(6) Improvement of the diagnosis capacity. This indicator is intended to measure whether a

relationship exists between using a telemedicine system and improving the quality in diagnosis, for

instance, whether the introduction of the telemedicine system has allowed a more precise diagnosis.

If the evidence found shows that a system has improved diagnostic precision, it is considered that this

indicator has been evaluated.

(7) Improvement of the organisation process. The introduction of a new system always brings

changes in the way an institution is organised, for instance the introduction of a real time teleconsul-

tation application may modify doctors schedules. Data referring to a change in the way technical and

human resources are allocated have also been considered.

Impact on the patient health indicators

(8) Utility. When analysing the impact of a system on the patient health, not only do dramatic

changes on the mortality rates have to be considered, but also changes in the patient’s mental and

emotional welfare, anything which means an improvement of her or his quality of life. Therefore,

data which shows a reduction in the mortality rate and data which shows a reduction in patient waiting

time are both considered.

Impact on the accessibility indicators

(9) Variations on the feeling of isolation. Due to the scarcity of resources, in many developing

countries there is a trend to leave rural areas and migrate to urban areas. This trend includes health

care workers who have usually carried out their studies in big cities and feel isolated when working

in rural villages. Thus rural areas, which already have limited resources for health provision, face

a high rotation of health care workers. Furthermore, patients living in isolated areas are not able to

access all levels of health care and they often feel isolated from the national health care system. In this

document, data or articles referring to a reduction in the feeling of isolation for patients and health

care workers have been taken into account. This also includes access to tele-education courses for

health care workers or better access to health information for the population living in remote areas.

(10) Accessibility to a higher quality health care system. Telemedicine systems are usually

used for teleconsultation, thus supporting health care workers attending in remote areas. So patients


Table 2.3: Degree of evidence of the studies

Level of evidence Degree of evidence Study design

1 Very good Meta-analysis.

2 Very good Large sample randomized controlled trials.

3 Good Small sample randomized controlled trials

4 Good Nonrandomized controlled prospective studies (multicentric).

5 Fair Nonrandomized controlled prospective studies (monocentric).

6 Fair Cohort studies.

7 Fair Case and control studies.

8 Poor Non-controlled clinical series, descriptive studies.

9 Poor Anecdotes or case reports.

do not have to go to higher level health institutions to be assessed and he or she is directly attended

by a specialist through a telemedicine system, who can also access the medical history of the pa-

tient simultaneously. Furthermore, telemedicine can improve protocol for emergency cases. In this

document, data showing that new disciplines have been extended to remote areas or the protocol for

emergencies has been improved, has been considered.

Economic Impact Indicators

(11) Effects on the health care centre. It is important to consider the economic impact of a

telemedicine project to such a small unit as the health care centre. This is because sometimes a project

can cause a revolution on a higher level if a telemedicine system creates a huge impact. Therefore

data concerning costs of the installation of a communication system compared with benefits it brings

are considered within this indicator.

(12) Effects on the national health care system. With this indicator this document intends to

take into account studies or data referring to the economic impact of improving coverage through

telemedicine at a national level.


Table 2.4: Recommendations for the adoption or not adoption of an evaluated technology

Level of evidence Degree of evidence Recommendations for the adoption or non

adoption of an evaluated technology

1 Very good Correct scientific evidence exists

2 Very good

3 Good

4 Good

5 Normal Sufficient scientific evidence exists

6 Normal

7 Normal

8 Poor Insufficient scientific evidence exists

9 Poor

2.2.2 Assessment of projects

Evaluation of the degree of scientific evidence of the data and articles found has been carried

out through the nine-level categorisation detailed in [69]. In this categorisation meta-analysis and

large sample randomized controlled trials show very good evidence, controlled and small sample ran-

domized controlled trials and nonrandomized controlled prospective studies (multicentric) show good

evidence, observational studies (analytic and transversal) show fair evidence, and descriptive studies

and non-controlled trials show poor evidence. In Table 2.3 a summary of the degree of evidence of

the different studies is presented.

2.2.3 Criteria for the presentation of results

A degree of evidence was established in order to make recommendations considering all data and

articles found. Thus, an article with good evidence (level three in the table described before) offers the

correct scientific evidence for recommending or not recommending the use of a certain telemedicine

system. This degree of evidence has been obtained from [70]. In Table 2.4 a summary of the

recommendations which can be made according to the degree of evidence of the different studies is

presented.

3Results

Due to limitations on the number of pages of the document, it has not been possible to include

information related to the context where the projects have been carried out. In order to get a better

understanding of such a context, it is strongly recommended to read Appendix A, which describes it

in detail. Furthermore, it includes a description of the technical terms used in the following sections.

3.1 Places where Materials for Description have been Recalled

Through the search process carried out in international indexed scientific journals, the following

results have been obtained1:

1. Colombia and telemedicine (11 matches)

2. Colombian and telemedicine (3 matches)

3. Colombia and telehealth (0 matches)

4. Colombian and telehealth (0 matches)

5. Colombia and ehealth (99 matches)

6. Colombian and ehealth (1 match)

7. Colombia and e-health (1 match)

8. Colombian and e-health (0 matches)

1This combinations were also introduced in Spanish. The results showed are the sum of both languages.

27

28 CHAPTER 3. RESULTS

Contrary to what can be expected, according to what has been said in Section 2.1, several articles

were retrieved. However, many of them are coincidences of the same article. Thus, all the eleven

articles recalled using combination of words No. 1, contained all the valid references, since 98 out of

the 99 articles retrieved when using combination No. 5 were due to a failure of a database searching

machine2 and the rest of them belong to those found when introducing combination No. 1.

Within this collection of articles a review similar to the one presented in this document was

found [72]. It contains many references to different projects which allowed identification of many

telemedicine initiatives carried out in Colombia: Vision Technology Group project, the Centro de

Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional project in Leticia and the islands of San Andrés and Providencia,

the telemedicine activities carried out by Grupo de Investigación en Telesalud (GIT)-Universidad de

Caldas, the Red de Telemedicina de Antioquía designed by Equipo Interdisciplinario de Telemedicina

(EIT)-Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, the telemedicine project developed by Ecopetrol (Colom-

bian Petroleum Company) and the teleradiology services provided by Cardiobip Ltd in the late nineties.

An article about ethics [78] mentioned Resolution No. 1448 and another one was actually Resolu-

tion 2184 [82], obtaining a good glimpse about telemedicine legal issues. [122] was not accessible3

and [91] was impossible to recall physically, since it was only published on paper. [15] makes ref-

erence to the first telemedicine initiative developed by the Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Na-

cional; an identification of telemedicine needs in the department of Amazonas, which was the seed

for other telemedicine project carried out by the Centro in the same area. Indeed, [3] references a

successful dermatology case solved through a telemedicine system installed by the Centro in the de-

partment of Amazonas. [100] describes the telemedicine activities carried out by Subprogram EHAS

– Colombia, concretely in the department of Cauca. This article also mentioned Ecopetrol, San An-

dres and Providencia and GIT-Universidad de Caldas projects cited above. Furthermore [11], it is

also cited in its references section. It is an article which presents multiple results of the teleradiology

project carried out by Vision Technology Group. [116] shows results of a teleconsultation applica-

tion developed by the Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá called Doctor Chat. This application aims at

providing a tool for all Colombian citizens to ask their medical doubts to an specialist. Last two

articles retrieved referred to Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia and its telemedicine initiatives:

2The searching engine also takes into account when the word salud appears preceded by a word ending in e. However,

in September 4th 2008 this problem was solved and 1 result was retrieved.3I could only retrieve articles from journals accessible in the AAU library online system.

3.1 Places where Materials for Description have been Recalled 29

one for helping displaced people caused by the Colombian internal conflict, [119], and another one

for creating, jointly with Grupo Destino, a simulator with medical education purposes, [121]. These

last two articles also served for identifying Programa de Investigación y Desarrollo en Redes de Ac-

ceso Universal para la teleducación y la telemedicina, predecessor of Red Piloto de Teleasistencia

Sanitaria (ReTAS), both of which have been developed by Grupo de I+D en Nuevas Tecnologías en

Telecomunicaciones (GNTT)-Universidad del Cauca.

Web searching was also fruitful and eight more articles were retrieved due to this process. First

two ones, [117] and [120], make also reference to Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia, describing in

more detail the telemedicine activities carried out by them. [16] presents results of the project design

by EIT-Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana mentioned before, describing in detail all the applications

developed within the project framework. Other article about Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad

Nacional was also found; in this case, [14] makes reference to the methods they use for transfer-

ring medical images. [7] presents a dissertation from the coordinator of GIT-Universidad de Caldas

about the role of the group within the University. [46] shows the results of an economic compari-

son between Vision Technology Group services and traditional ones. Two more articles, [102] and

[103], were retrieved, both are about the T@lemed program, a telemedicine project carried out in

Brazil and Colombia financed by the European Commission. In addition to the articles, another im-

portant document for identifying telemedicine initiatives in Colombia was retrieved, [115]. It is a

systematic review similar to the one presented in this document carried out by ITU, which in my

opinion does not fulfill its purpose, since no recommendations are made. Nevertheless, it refers to

several telemedicine projects, thus providing very important information about some projects already

identified and bout four new ones: researches carried out by Grupo de Investigación en Telemedic-

ina (GITEM)-Universidad Distrital Francisco Jose de Caldas, the activities of Grupo de Ingeniería

Biomédica (GIB)-Universidad de los Andes, government’s Connectivity Agenda and software Galeno

developed within the Leticia and San Andrés project described before. Web searching also served for

retrieving [9], which mentions Dr. García telemedicine activities, and for finding Caprecom and Fun-

dación Cardiovascular de Colombia (FCV) websites, which contain a lot of useful information about

telemedicine in the country.

In addition to the telemedicine articles and initiatives described above, others were found thank

to the interviews with the contacts from those projects. For instance, due to Programa de Investi-

gación y Desarrollo en Redes de Acceso Universal para la teleducación y la telemedicina, Oscar


Calderón was contacted. He provided me with very useful information, including contacts within the

Universidad del Cauca4, which let me identify the ReTAS and Red Telemática para la prestación de

servicios de Telemedicina y Telesalud, carried out by GNTT-Universidad del Cauca and Facultad de

Ingeniería Electrónica-Universidad del Cauca, respectively. Furthermore, he sent me a link to the

First National Meeting on Telemedicine5, were key information about already found projects could be

retrieved and many other ones identified, such as telemedicine intentions of the Governor’s Office at

department of Guaviare, the teleradiology pilot project designed by Grupo de Investigación en Bioin-

geniería (GIB)-Universidad EAFIT, the telemedicine activities carried out by SaludCoop, the results

of the teleradiology project deployed by the Hospital Universitario La Samaritana in the nineties,

and activities of the Asociación Colombiana Medicina, Informática y Telesalud.

Other articles and projects were also retrieved due to the interviewing process. Contacts with

the FCV served for recalling three articles, [89] [87] and [88]. The first one makes a comparison

between traditional methods and modern ones using telemedicine for providing cardiology services;

the second one describes Programa Galaxia, a wide telemedicine project carried out in department of

Santander; and the third one presents a dissertation on the psychopathology of telemedicine. Contacts

with GIB-Universidad EAFIT were also fruitful and another paper was recalled, [55]; it describes

a teleradiology project carried out in Cali and shows tests made to evaluate its performance. In

addition to this, three more telemedicine initiatives could be identified: a project designed by Facultad

de Medicina-Universidad de Antioquía, referred by Velez6, the telemedicine activities of Esoft Ltd,

referred by Kopec7, and researches by Grupo de Investigación en Ingeniería Clínica (GINIC) within

HUS by Torres8. References to already identified projects were also made by other contacts; all of

them will be summarized after describing each telemedicine initiative presents in the next section.

Furthermore, contact information about each institution, including its website, and telephone, email

and position of the person contacted within each institution is available in Appendix C.

In addition to this, contacts with the expert selected, Dr. Martha Giraldo Executive Director of

Renata, to corroborate findings, provided the name of another institution, ITMS. Contacts with them

allow retrieving one last article, [44], regarding a comparison between a tele-electrocardiograph and

4Contacts with GNTT -Universidad del Cauca. email 2.5Contacts with GNTT -Universidad del Cauca. email 2.6Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia, email No. 5.7Contacts with Hospital Universitario la Samaritana, email No. 5.8Contacts with Hospital Universitario la Samaritana, email No. 2.

3.1 Places where Materials for Description have been Recalled 31

traditional methods.

Therefore, a total of 25 articles regarding telemedicine in Colombia were retrieved along with

information about 24 different institutions carrying out telemedicine projects in the country. These

are:

Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom

Grupo de Investigación en Telesalud (GIT)-Universidad de Caldas

Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional

Fundación CardioVascular de Colombia

Subprogram EHAS – Colombia

Grupo de I+D en Nuevas Tecnologías en Telecomunicaciones (GNTT) -Universidad del Cauca

Facultad de Ingeniería Electrónica-Universidad del Cauca

Telemed

Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá

SaludCoop

Grupo de Investigación en Bioingeniería (GIB)-Universidad EAFIT

Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia

Hospital Universitario La Samaritana

Ecopetrol

Vision Technology Group

Cardiobip Ltd

Grupo de Investigación en Telemedicina (GITEM)-Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas

Grupo de Ingeniería Biomédica (GIB)-Universidad de los Andes

Facultad de Medicina-Universidad de Antioquía

Equipo Interdisciplinario de Telemedicina (EIT) - de la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana

Asociación Colombiana de Informática Médica y Telesalud

Esoft Ltd

Dr. Díaz

ITMS-Colombia

Information in detail about the projects carried out by this 24 institutions will be presented in

detail in the following section. It will include all the information retrieved, both through Internet and


by interviews, regarding indicators presented in Section 2.2.1. It has been decided to make reference

to institutions instead to individual projects since it is easier to present results this way. Within each

institution, each individual project will be described in detail providing information related to the

aforementioned indicators.

As it can be noticed, institutions and projects names appear in Spanish instead of in English.

This decision has been taken for respecting their real names. All names in Spanish in italics appear

translated in Appendix D.

3.2 Description of Telemedicine Initiatives Recalled

3.2.1 Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom

In 2007 through Agreement No. 357, the CNSSS from the Ministerio de la Protección Social

allocated 10 billion COP from FOSyGA to the Eventos Catastróficos y Accidentes de Tráfico (ECAT)

account for the improvement of the national emergencies network. This Agreement had two compo-

nents: provision of medical devices, communication devices, and communication infrastructure for

transferring patients in a critical state, and implementing health services on a telemedicine basis in

the departments of Amazonas, Caquetá, Guaviare, Guainia, Vichada, Vaupés, Chocó y San Andrés

y Providencia. 20% of this budget was used for the first component while 80% served two parts:

a) provision of emergency, reanimation, and intensive and intermediate care devices; and b) support

services, in this case those provided through telemedicine [30]. Furthermore, through Agreement No

378, financing have been granted for 2008 with the allocation of 3.5 billion COP for strengthening

this project [29]. Departments were chosen according to an intense revision carried out by Grupo

de Atención en Emergencias y Desastres, which identified them as those department lacking of key

services for emergency attention such as intensive and intermediate care [30].

Ministerio de la Protección Social entrusted the implementation of this project to Caprecom, a

public EPS9, which in turn, through a public tender, entrusted it to three reference centres: Fun-

dación Cardiovascular de Colombia (FCV), Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional and GIT-

Universidad de Caldas10. These centres make use of the infrastructures provided by the Compartel

Program which grant connectivity. Therefore, Ministerio de la Protección Social is in charge of guar-

9Contacts with Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom, email No. 8.10Contacts with Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom, email No. 10.

3.2 Description of Telemedicine Initiatives Recalled 33

anteeing provision of devices, contracting centres of reference, training of health care professionals

and continuous technical and scientific support, but it is not in charge of services per se11.

Nowadays, the project is running in 11 IPS under intermediate care basis and in 58 under basic

telemedicine basis12. Basic telemedicine consists of attention through specialised teleconsultation

in the following services: cardiology, neurology, pediatrics, internal medicine, gynecology, urology,

otorrynolaryngology, dermatology, clinic of pain, infectology, telelectrocardiography and teleradiol-

ogy for ambulatory patients [81]. In these cases, the remote doctor consults via Internet the specialist

located at the reference centre, who analyzes the case and sends back his/her opinion by the same

means. On the other hand, intermediate care has been design for patients in a critical state, who can

be monitored continuously by specialists located at the reference centre. In the first six months of

operation, 3026 patients under basic telemedicine basis and 245 under intermediate care have been

attended. In the first case, mean response time from the reference centre has been 2 hours13. However,

Ministerio de la Protección Social does not count with any other evaluation14.

Mrs. Hoyos, from Grupo de Atención Emergencias y Desastres, emphasizes that health care

provision on a telemedicine basis intends at improving access to health care services, quality and

opportunity in the attention, whereas decreasing, at the same time, direct and social costs associated

to it. However, telemedicine does not substitute specialised personal attention at any time, but allow

those living in remote areas to have access to these services15.

3.2.2 GIT-Universidad de Caldas

GIT-Universidad de Caldas is a research group of the Facultad de las Ciencias de la Salud of the

Universidad de Caldas created in 2001 with Colciencias financing [23]. Since then, it has developed

several telemedicine projects which will be described below.

Teledermatology project

In 2002 the centre began providing dermatology services on a telemedicine basis for allowing

people living in remote areas of the department of Caldas to get access to dermatology consultation

11Contacts with Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom, email No. 8.12Contacts with Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom, email No. 10.13Contacts with Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom, email No. 8.14Contacts with Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom, email No. 5.15Contacts with Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom, email No. 5.


Table 3.1: Cases Attended by the teledermatology project in each institution every year from 2002

Institution 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Hospital San Vicente de Paul - Anserma 5

Centro de salud Assbasalud 70 2

Hospital Felipe Suarez - Salamina 58 71

Hospital Infantil Universitario 63 1

Hospital San Félix - La Dorada 8 36 208 227 384 364 224

Hospital San Antonio - Manzanares 5 1

Hospital San Cayetano - Marquetalia 1

Hospital San José - Samaná 1 6 9

Hospital San José de Aguadas 2 65 120 227 194 155 65

Hospital San Juan de Dios - Pensilvania 1

Hospital San Jose de Neira 6 10 31 2

ESE Hospital Santa Teresita - Pacora 43

Hospital San Vicente de Paul - 3 18 4

Hospital Norcasia 1

Hospital San Juan de Dios - Riosucio 22 13

Hospital San Rafael - Risaralda 1

without having to physically travel to the Manizales, capital of the department [62]. This project

belongs to an agreement between the Universidad de Caldas and the Territorial Direction for health

of the department of Caldas, for providing these services to 25 municipalities16.

In Table 3.1, these health care centres are detailed, together with number of patients attended

by each of them every year17. Some of them counts with broadband infrastructure, and some of

them use traditional telephone lines, but in all cases cost-efficient solutions have been used due to

the lack of economic resources of the area18. To do so, GIT counts with its own web platform,

which complies with all the requirements imposed by the Ministerio de la Protección Social, where

16Contacts with GIT-Universidad de Caldas, email No. 5.17Document attached in Contacts with GIT-Universidad de Caldas, email No. 518Document attached in Contacts with GIT-Universidad de Caldas, email No. 7


management of cases occurs. Remote institutions access the system and add the appropriate images,

then, specialists from the reference centre attend the cases under a store and forward basis. In addition

to this, telephone support is also provided for defining technical and operative issues19. The mean

response time is 48 hours20.

However, as it can be seen in Table 3.1, in very few establishments the service has been continuous

through the years. In deed, nowadays, service is only provided in 5 health care centres. According to

Dr. Arbelaez, coordinator of the group, this is due to human factors, since the rotation of health care

professionals is very high, and, thus, those who received training leave the institution in the short run.

Occasionally, it is also due to the lack of commitment of health centres managers. Furthermore, he

mentions a second factor: GIT did not provide continuous visit for support and following-up due to

the lack of financing for this task, since centres were difficult to access, hence expensive to reach21.

Even so, the program is a reference both nationally and internationally [7]. Until June 9th 2008, 2727

cases had been attended, entailing the transfer of 12322 medical images. Thanks to these results,

several agreements are ready to be signed for the extension of this project to other municipalities of

the department22.

Teleradiology project

In the same municipalities GIT provides teledermatology services, it is developing a project for

teleconsultation in radiology. Nowadays, comparison between traditional and virtual reading tools is

being carried out in 100 adults and 50 children, but no other data are available about this project [62].

Virtual education project

In addition to the projects described above, GIT has been doing a great effort in virtual education in

the last years. Through a research project financed by PHO, it aims at comparing efficacy of a virtual

method developed by the group for education in Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (AIEPI,

in Spanish) methodology with face-to-face traditional methods. The analysis of the later has been

already carried out, but the former it is pending [62], so no results are available yet. Furthermore, all

19Document attached in Contacts with GIT-Universidad de Caldas, email No. 720Document attached in Contacts with GIT-Universidad de Caldas, email No. 521Document attached in Contacts with GIT-Universidad de Caldas, email No. 722Document attached in Contacts with GIT-Universidad de Caldas, call No.2


images stored through teledermatology and teleradiology consultations are used for students training

at the Universidad de Caldas [7].

Caprecom project

On November 27th 2007, GIT signed a contract with Caprecom through which it was in charge of

providing telemedicine services in 20 municipalities from departments of Chocó, Guainia, Putumayo

and Vaupés [114]. Then, at the beginning of 2008 contracts were signed with each IPS beneficiary of

the project, which are detailed in Table 3.223.

In these health care centres, the following specialties are provided: pediatrics, internal medicine,

dermatology, gynecology, orthopedy, cardiology, cardiology, infectology, urology and otorrinolaryn-

gology24. These services use the same telemedicine platform described in the teledermatology project:

remote doctors add medical images, which are analysed later by the specialists located in the refer-

ence centre. Nowadays, there is no impact evaluation of these services, but there exist a relation of

patients attended by each establishment25, which is shown in Table 3.2. All together, GIT-Caprecom

has attended 532 cases.

GIT-Universidad de Caldas, appears in the two systematic reviews regarding telemedicine projects

in Latin America retrieved [72] and [115]. Furthermore, several interviewed persons made reference

to it26.

3.2.3 Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional

Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional is an IPS authorized by the CNSSS since in 2004

Resolution No. 2184 came into effect [47], which provides health care services on a telemedicine

basis. Among these services are: radiology, cardiology, internal medicine, gynecology, dermatology,

infectology, otorrynolaringology, urology, pediatrics and orthopedics. They are provided using an

application called Virtual Hospital (from Hospital Virtual) which consisted of three modules: Saruro,

23Contacts with GIT-Universidad de Caldas, email No. 5.24Contacts with GIT-Universidad de Caldas, email No. 5.25Contacts with GIT-Universidad de Caldas, email No. 5.26Contacts with Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom, call No. 2., contacts with Subprogram EHAS – Colom-

bia, mail No. 2, contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, call No.2, contacts with Fundación Santa

Fe de Bogotá, email No. 3 and contacts with GIB-Universidad de los Andes, email 2.


Table 3.2: Patients attended by GIT – Caprecom

Department Municipality Health Institution Cases Attended

Chocó Bahía Solano Hospital Local Julio Figueroa Villa 43

Chocó Tado ESE Hospital San Juan de Tado 26

Chocó Unguía Hospital Local de Unguía 17

Chocó Carmen de Atrato Hospital San Roque 34

Chocó Condoto ESE Hospital San Jose de Condoto 27

Chocó Istmina ESE Hospital Eduardo Santos 26

Chocó Quibdo Hospital Ismael Roldán 27

Chocó Acandi Hospital Lascario Barbosa Avendaño 21

Guainia San José Centro de Salud de San José 0

Guainia San Felipe Centro de Salud de San Felipe 9

Guainia Barrancominas Centro de Salud de Barrancominas 2

Putumayo Villa Garzón ESE Hospital San Miguel Arcangel 40

Putumayo Puerto Guzmán ESE Hospital Jorge Julio Guzman 37

Putumayo Puerto Caicedo Centro de Salud Alcides Jimenez 61

Putumayo Villa de Gamuez Hospital Sagrado Corazón de Jesús 33

Putumayo Orito ESE Hospital Orito 22

Putumayo San Miguel Hospital Fronterizo la Dorada 23

Putumayo Puerto Leguizamo Centro de Salud Maria Angelinez 71

Vaupés Taraira Centro de Salud de Taraira 6

Vaupés Carurú Centro de Salud de Carurú 7


the information system of the centre, SAI, the image managing system and Sofia, the platform for

virtual learning [20].

Saruro allows to provide telemedicine services on an efficient and scalable way by managing

availability of the system information in the Virtual Hospital. Medical information is structured fol-

lowing the HL7 model and a service-oriented architecture. On the other hand, SAI, which stands for

Image Managing System in Spanish, is a platform designed for allowing people to work with different

medical images and to store and access them online, without having to install a specific software for

visualising them. Furthermore, it allows extraction of data existing within the images, such as meta-

data in DICOM format, and download them in different formats such as bmp, jpg or png, for their

better handling in the computer. Finally, Sofia is a platform for learning online designed as support

for pedagogic activities by the use of medical teaching tools [20].

The Centre currently counts with 21 specialists providing telemedicine services to 29 heath care

centres along the country27. 27 of them belong to the Caprecom project described in detail in Sec-

tion 3.2.128. These are shown in Table 3.3.

All these health care centres, except ESE Hospital San Jose del Guaviare, receive basic telemedicine

basis services, whereas, ESE San Jose del Guaviare receives basic telemedicine and intermediate

care services. For providing the latter, it counts with intern doctors providing services 24 hours a

day29. This health care centre has been operated by the Centre since December 2005, first within the

T@lemed project, described in Section 3.2.8, then through a private agreement between both institu-

tions, and currently through Caprecom. According to Dr. Romero, director of the Centre, the project

with ESE San Jose del Guaviare is the most successful telemedicine projects in the country, due to

the savings it produces each time a remission is avoided30. This is corroborated by Mr. Bermúdez,

coordinator of the project, who provides data to confirm this topic: 35,000 COP for medical consulta-

tion, between 500,000 and 2 million COP for travelling expenses, 200,000 COP per accommodation

(stays last between 5 and 10 days) and a variable costs related to the time the patient does not work.

Therefore, when patient belongs to the subsidized regime, state saves between 4 and 5 million COP

per patient31.

27Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, email No. 2.28Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, email No. 4.29Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, call No. 2.30Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, call No. 2.31Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, email No. 4.


Table 3.3: Institutions within the agreement between Centro de Telemedicina and Caprecom

Department Municipality Health Institution

Amazonas Puerto Nariño Hospital Local de Puerto Nariño

Amazonas Puerto Santander Centro de Salud de Puerto Santander

Amazonas La Pedrera Centro de Salud de la Pedrera

Amazonas Tarapacá Centro de Salud de Tarapacá

Amazonas La Chorrera Centro de Salud de La Chorrera

Caquetá Cartagena del Chaira ESE Hospital Local

Caquetá La Montañita Centro de Salud La Montañita

Caquetá Belen de Andaquies Hospital Local San Roque

Caquetá Morelia Centro de Salud Morelia

Caquetá El Paujil Hospital Local El Paujil

Caquetá El Doncello Hospital el Buen Samaritano

Caquetá Solita Centro de Salud Solita

Caquetá San Jose de la Fragua Centro de Salud San Jose de la Fragua

Caquetá Puerto Rico Hospital Local San José de Puerto Rico

Caquetá San Vicente del Caguan Hospital San Rafael

Caquetá Milan Centro de Salud Milán

Caquetá Curillo Hospital Local de Curillo

Caquetá Solano Hospital Local Solano

Caquetá Valparaiso Centro de Salud Valparaiso

Caquetá Albania Centro de Salud Albania

Guaviare Calamar Puesto de Salud de Calamar

Guaviare Miraflores Centro de Salud de Miraflores

Guaviare San José de Guaviare ESE San José del Guaviare

Guaviare El Retorno Centro de salud de El Retorno

Vichada La Primavera Hospital La Primavera

Vichada Cumaribo Hospital de Cumaribo

Vichada Santa Rosalía Hospital de Santa Rosalía


The Centre has also an agreement with Clínica Leticia for providing telemedicine services since

September 200532, specially in radiology and dermatology33. In deed, one of the papers recovered

described in detail how this network allowed treatment of a patient with cutaneous tuberculosis [3].

According to Dr. Gutierrez, director of Clínica Leticia, the agreement has allowed weekly resolution

of these kind of cases, when before this happened three times a year [95]. Mr. Bermúdez attributes

this impact to the wide use of Saruro, due to the several training programs carried out in the Centre

about this specific platform34.

The other health care institution where Centro de Telemedicina provides telemedicine services

is the Hospital Nuestra Señora de los Remedios in Riohacha. This project began, with financing

remaining from T@lemed, in December 2006, which provided the infrastructure required35. Although

this network worked smoothly during 2007, nowadays the institution is looking for financing for

project continuations, since operation costs were assumed by the hospital36.

Among the 29 of them, the Centre has attended around 10,000 patient in different specialties.

Table 3.4 sums up cases attended by each institution in each of the specialties offered37:

In addition to the patients attended, according to Dr. Romero, both health care staff’s and patients’

satisfaction is very high, and gives and example “using traditional methods it takes 3 or 4 months to

get an appointment with an specialist, meanwhile using telemedicine it takes 1 or 2 hours”39. He also

mentions one of the reasons of the great success reached by the projects carried out by the Centre: “we

use technology developed by us”40. This work is developed by the research group of the Centro called

Bioingenium [20], which, among other things, has developed a robotized microscope with an attached

camera for filming and recording the content of the lens of the microscope. The model, currently in

a designing stage, also allows picture capture and handling through a novel method created by them

called JPEG2000, described in detail in [14]. It allows as well identification of malaria areas within

the images.

Furthermore, the Centre did also develop projects in the past. The first one was called TeleAma-

32Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, email No. 2.33Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, email No. 4.34Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, email No. 4.35Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, call No. 3.36Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, call No. 2.37Document attached to contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, email No. 4.39Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, call No. 3.40Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, call No. 2.


Table 3.4: Patients attended by Centro de Telemedicina -Universidad Nacional

Specialty Caprecom38 ESE San Jose Clínica Hospital Ntra. All

del Guaviare Leticia Sra. Remedios

Cardiology 12 19 1 0 32

Intermediate Care 0 2 0 0 66

Dermatology 57 415 781 32 1285

Ginecology 23 1 0 0 28

Infectology 8 93 0 2 103

Mammography 0 0 363 0 363

Internal Medicine 39 3 1 0 43

Pediatric Neumology 0 0 1 0 1

Orthopedic 12 0 0 0 12

Othorrinolaringology 7 6 0 0 13

Pathology 0 0 2 0 2

Radiology 18 4751 933 1781 7483

Hemathology 0 2 2 0 2

Urology 4 3 3 0 7

Total 212 5295 2082 1815 9404


zon, and its results are published in [15]. It took place in 1996 and implied an identification of the

deficiencies of public health care system needs of the department of Amazonas that could be solved

through the use of ICTs. This project allowed to lay the foundations of a bigger telemedicine project,

455,000 USD budget, started in 2000 by the Universidad Nacional jointly with ITEC-Telecom(the Na-

tional Telecommunications Company) with financing from the Department of Hospitals from France,

Colciencias and the Fund for Social Communication [72]. This project aimed at interconnecting in-

stitutions belonging to the three levels of health care attention in order to provide high quality heath

services in remote areas. To do so, they developed two different pilot projects: one interconnecting

the Puesto de Salud Centro Providencia, a level one institution located in Apaporis, a remote area of

the Amazonian jungle, the Hospital San Rafael in Leticia, a level two hospital located in the capital

of the department of Amazonas, and the Universidad Nacional as the reference centre. In the other

project the university also acted as the reference centre and the level one and two facilities were Hos-

pital old Providence, located in the island of Providencia and Hospital Timothy Britton, located in the

island of San Andrés, respectively [72].

Remote stations were provided with telemedicine devices such as webcams, digital cameras, dig-

ital stethoscopes and microscopes, x-ray scanners as well as a personal computer for handling and

transferring data. Furthermore, an Internet connection using Clear Channel technologies was in-

stalled in every station using ITEC-Telecom infrastructure, solving this way communication prob-

lems due to the huge distances between nodes (Bogotá is 1088 km away from Leticia and 1025 km.

from the island of San Andrés) [72]. In addition to this, a software called Galeno was developed

by ITEC-Telecom within the project. It allowed clinic histories management and counted with tools

for visualisation and handling of medical images [115]. However, before starting using the software,

ITEC-Telecom was winded up by the government and the software was never used due to legal prop-

erty issues, although the Company had invested 230 million COPs in the project41.

In addition to this, according to Dr. Salazar, responsible for software Galeno development, the

network among San Andrés, Providencia and Bogotá was never used, and the network with Leticia

and Apaporis never worked as it was expected42. Furthermore, Dr. Romero observed that “he does

not know any register of any patient attended within these networks” and points to the lack of a clear

41Contacts with GIB-Universidad de los Andes, email No. 2.42Contacts with GIB-Universidad de los Andes, email No. 2.


objective as the the cause of the project failure43. He also adds that the satellite link with Apaporis

was very expensive and that there [in Apaporis] indigenous never felt part of the project due, partly,

to language differences44. The failure was such that the French government asked for the devolution

of devices installed in Apaporis45. Moreover, devices in the island of Providencia were destroyed by

hurricane in 200646.

Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional presented its results in the First National Meeting

on Telemedicine held in Colombia in 2003. Furthermore, it is present in both systematic review re-

trieved [72] and [115]. In addition to this, it has been mentioned for almost all the people interviewed.

3.2.4 Fundación Cardiovascular de Colombia

CV was created in 1986 in Bucaramanga, department of Santander, thanks to the efforts of a

group of cardiologists willing to improve health care attention in Colombia, and, nowadays, it is one

the leaders in the health sector in the country [51].

In 2004 the Centro Nacional de Telemedicina (CNT) of the FCV was authorized as a center of ref-

erence for telemedicine provision, which coincided with the beginning of the first telemedicine project

carried out by them. It was a pilot telemedicine program in the department of Santander called “Pro-

grama Galaxia”, which provided telecardiology and teleradiology consultation to 50 municipalities,

using Internet. The teleradiology activities were carried out through the use of digital cameras, while

for the telecardiology ones, CNT counted with its own designed digital electrocardiograph called

ECG 1200. Furthermore, CNT had developed an online platform to facilitate information exchange,

together with an electronic medical history of their patients [87].

Within this program a comparison between the performance of ECG 1200 and traditional method

was carried out [89]. The study consisted in a random trial of 87 patients, ranging from 18 to 80 years

old, where 7 experts evaluated results from both methods. Results showed that in all cases (100%)

cardiac rhythm analysis was coincident using both methods, and evaluation of cardiac frequency

showed similar results. Thus, concluding that the use of ECG 1200 was an appropriate tool for

providing cardiology services on a telemedicine basis.

43Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, call No. 3.44Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, call No. 2.45Contacts with GIB-Universidad de los Andes, email No. 2.46Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, call No. 2.


Nowadays, CNT-FCV offers its services in a wider range of specialties, including telemonitoring

of patients in critical state. To do so, the centre is made up of an interdisciplinary group for developing

both telemedicine tools and providing medical services [51]. A brief description of the services

offered by CNT-FCV is provided bellow.

Teleconsultation. Consultation on a telemedicine basis is provided in the following specialties:

cardiology, internal medicine, neurology, gynecology, cardiovascular surgery, and odontology. These

services work as follows: the remote doctor from the IR accesses the online platform47, introduces

patient’s medical history and selects the specialty to be consulted. The CNT-FCV Contact Centre

receives the request and contacts the expert required to attend such a consultation. Then, the expert

analyzes the medical history and medical data attached, talks to the remote doctor by chat and defines

a diagnostic for the patient.

Teleradiology. This service uses the same platform described above, but in this case, a special

device, called UPT, is needed in the IR for taking radiology images. Then all data, together with the

medical history is introduced in the application, where the experts analyze it in the next 24 hours in

general cases and immediately in case of emergency

Telecardiology. For providing this service, the CNT-FCV makes use of ECG 1300 and evolution

of the ECG 1200 described above, which allows real time electrocardiography capture and non inva-

sive cardiology monitoring. For the rest, remote doctor has to follow the protocol already described.

Tele-ICU. This services consists in a group of specialists accessing remotely to the devices mon-

itoring a patient in the IR. Thus, the specialist has access to patient’s vital signs and interacts with

the staff at the IR for taking the appropriate measures at the right time. This service is actually being

provided by the CNT-FCV in 10 health care centres within the agreement with Caprecom. Health

care staff from these institutions also receives training on the use of the different devices and the on-

line platform. In addition to this, FCV staff carries out a great effort making beneficiaries part of the

project, thus trying to guarantee project sustainability [52]. Table 3.5 shows the institutions part of

the agreement with Caprecom.

Until June, this project had provided attention through his service to 170 patients48. The first case

attended within this agreement was motive of an article in the local newspaper [98].

In addition to this, the CNT provides the other three services in many health care centres. Table 3.6

47www.fcv.org/cnt48Contacts with Fundación CardioVascular de Colombia, call No. 2.

www.fcv.org/cnt


Table 3.5: Institutions within the agreement between FCV and Caprecom

Department Municipality Health Institution

Amazonas Leticia ESE Hospital San Rafael de Leticia

Caquetá Florencia Hospital Departamental María Inmaculada

Chocó Quibdó Clínica Quibdó IPS Caprecom

Guainia Puerto Inirida ESE Hospital Departamental

Manuel Elkin Patarroyo

Putumayo Puerto Asís ESE San Francisco de Asís

Putumayo Colón Hospital Pío XII

Putumayo Mocoa ESE José María Hernández

San Andres Island San Andrés Hospital Departamental de San Andrés Isla

Vaupes Mitú ESE Hospital San Antonio

Vichada Puerto Carreño ESE Departamental San Juan de Dios

shows a relation of [51]:

According to Dr. Miserque, director of CT-FCV, they count with impact evaluation of these

projects49; however, they can not be shared due to confidentiality issues50.

Despite the fact that FCV has been referred for almost all contacts interviewed51, it does not appear

in any of the systematic reviews retrieved.

49Contacts with Fundación CardioVascular de Colombia, call No. 2.50Contacts with Fundación CardioVascular de Colombia, email No. 5.51Contacts with Inti tutions involved.

Table 3.6: Other FCV telemedicine projects

Department Institutions

Valle del Cauca 42 IPS

Tolima 27 level one hospitals and 6 level two institutions

Boyacá 21 IPS

Sanatander 7 regional hospitals


3.2.5 Subprogram EHAS - Colombia

Enlace Hispano Americano de Salud (EHAS) [42] has developed one of its national subprograms

in Colombia. These subprograms are always composed by two partners: one in charge of the technical

issues and the other of the medicals. In Colombia both of them belong to the Universidad del Cauca:

Grupo de Ingeniería Telemática (GIT), as technical partner, and the Grupo de Sociedad y Salud as

medical. The program aims at developing pilot telemedicine experiences in rural areas for improv-

ing efficiency in public health care system in remote municipalities using appropriate and low-cost

technologies [42].

GIT is in charge of adapting EHAS solutions according to local needs. To do so, it counts with a

Low Cost Communications Lab, which was financed by Colciencias. EHAS proposed two different

technologies for providing voice and data communications to remote places: VHF and WiFi. The first

one uses radios for accomplishing both tasks; for data transfer radios are connected to a computer

through a modem. The communication through WiFi is achieved using standard devices tweaked

for allowing long distance links, thus providing broadband voice and data services. When deploying

networks using any of the systems, costs of internal communications is zero and the cost of the

Internet connection is shared among the institutions comprising the project. In addition to this, it

is worth mentioning that both systems can be supplied by solar power means [100]. All these data

revolve around the economic sustainability of the project.

Using these two systems, in February 2002 Subprogram EHAS-Colombia started the design of

two networks: EHAS-Silvia and EHAS-Costa Pacífico. The first one was financed through an @LIS

program as well as T@lemed, the Project described in Section 3.2.8, while the second was financed

by the Infodev World Bank Program [42].

The EHAS-Silvia network counts with an Internet connection installed in the Universidad del

Cauca, which is directly connected through a WiFi link to Nueva Guambia, a mountain located 36 km

away. Both Hospital San Carlos and Hospital Mama Dominga, located in Silvia within the Ingenous

Reservation of Guambía, connect to this point and deliver the signal through VHF systems to several

health care posts for which they are the reference centres [100].

Another Internet connection at the Universidad del Cauca also connects to Cerro Santana, a moun-

tain in the Occidental Mountain Range, where EHAS-Costa Pacífico network begins. This station

provides connectivity through WiFi links to the hospital in Timbiquí and the health post in Agua


Clarita located at 88 and 53 km, respectively. The former is also in charge of repeating the signal to

the hospitals in Jambaló and Guapí, which are also in charge of providing connectivity to some of the

level one institutions of their area of coverage.

In total both EHAS-Silvia and EHAS-Costa Pacífica provides connectivity to 5 level two hospitals

and 26 level one health care posts, some of which can only be accessible through the river such as

those depending on Timbiquí and López de Micay. In addition to the connectivity EHAS program

provides a wide range of telemedicine services available by email: epidemiological surveillance,

continuous training, reference-counter reference management system and teleconsultation. It is worth

mentioning that services provided have been chosen by users according to its needs, through what is

known as Participatory Action Research [100].

Within the EHAS-Costa Pacífica a evaluation was carried out in order to assess the real impact of

the network. It analyzed different factors such as users satisfaction, usability or sustainability. Results

showed that 71.6% of the users were very satisfied with the system, specially with the use of voice

services since they found it very easy to use (63.3%). This last data contrasts with the one for the

computer, where more than 50% of the users found it difficult or very difficult to use. Something

similar happens with Internet access; 66.6% of them found it difficult. Therefore, the use of voice

services was more frequent: more than 40% of the users used it very often, while the computer only

7.7%. A great part of these voice communications had the reference centre as destination (90%), some

of them for coordinating consultation appointments (77.7%). Furthermore, the reference-counter

reference management system was slowly been used (12.3% of the references). In addition to this,

the system was also used for both clinic and administrative second opinion: 66.7% declared having

used the system for the former often or very often, while 42.9% for the latter. Second opinion allowed

avoiding an average of 0.5 remissions per month, saving around 250,000 COP per remission. The

network also changed health care professionals situation in the area; 45.5% stated that her/his situation

had improved a lot. Overall, perception on the impact of the network was positive (30.8%) or very

positive (69.2%) [123].

However, despite of this positive results, according to Dr. Rendón, director of GIT, these projects

have difficulties to achieve great impacts in the area due, mainly, to two factors: “public health care

system in Colombia is deteriorating, specially in rural areas where many health care posts are being

abandoned, and hospitals priorities are centre on surviving, which is far from EHAS objectives”52.

52Contacts with Subprogram EHAS – Colombia, email No. 3.


In addition to these networks, the Subprogram EHAS-Colombia is currently carrying out two

more projects oriented to reinforce training where networks were deployed: one for strengthening

AIEPI methodology in Silvia and Jambaló though the use of ICTs and another one for telehealth

services as support for collective health53.

The Subprogram EHAS-Colombia presented its results in the First National Meeting on Telemedicine

held in Colombia in 2003. Furthermore, it is present in both systematic reviews retrieved [72]

and [115]. In addition to this, it has been mentioned for several people interviewed6.

3.2.6 GNTT-Universidad del Cauca

GNTT was created during the last decade [58], but it did not start its telemedicine activities

until 1999 when with financing from Colciencias and the Ministerio de Comunicaciones started

Programa de Investigación y Desarrollo en Redes de Acceso Universal para la teleducación y la

telemedicina [72]. Under its framework, a pilot network was designed for developing teleducation

and telemedicine activities in the south west part of Colombia, covering the departments of Cauca,

Valle and Nariño. Due to geographic and economic factors it could not be implemented54, however it

provided actors interested in developing telemedicine networks in Colombia a document containing

an in-depth analysis of the available strategies to do so [59], which has been widely used.

One of the projects that has used the designs proposed in [59] was the Red Piloto de Teleasisten-

cia Sanitaria (ReTAS). This project was developed by the GNTT together with Grupo de estudios

de Tuberculosis and the Grupo de Tecnologías de la Información, both of them belonging to the

Universidad del Cauca. It allowed installing a network supporting telemedicine applications for pre-

vention, early detection and appropriate treatment of Tuberculosis in chosen municipalities of the

department of Cauca: Popayán, Santander de Quilchao, Silvia, Caloto, Morales, Caldono and Guapí.

The project which was financed again by Colciencias and the Ministerio de Comunicaciones, was

carried out between June 1st 2003 and July 31st 2004 for communicating level one institutions in the

aforementioned localities with Departmental Office for Health in Popayán [60].

Several applications such as individual tuberculosis cards, for a better follow-up of the patient,

teleconsultation and teleducation tools and a forum for opinion exchange between patients and health

care professionals were designed. All these services are still available through a server accessible at

53Contacts with Subprogram EHAS – Colombia, email No. 3.54Contacts with GNTT-Universidad del Cauca, email No. 10.


http://www.retas.unicauca.edu.co. In some of the institutions, these applications used

Compartel infrastructure for transmission, other counted with their own such as the one in Silvia pro-

vided by EHAS, and the one in the hospital in Guapí provided by Red Telemática para la Prestación

de Servicios de Telesalud y Telemedicina. In these cases, tests were carried out for ensuring compati-

bility among networks before installation. Furthermore, in all cases security was granted through the

use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) [60].

This network was installed and worked at full operation during some months, when the technical

responsible of the maintenance of the network was GNTT. Furthermore, at that time, health care

professionals were fully trained due to several courses they received and technical and economic

evaluations were performed. Although Dr. Castillo, creator of the project, indicates that they obtained

excellent results in improving medical attention and promptness of the service, these documents could

not be retrieved and results can not be showed55. Once operation and maintenance of the network were

transferred to the Departmental Office for Health, particular bureaucratic issues hindered its adoption,

and nowadays it only operates as support for Grupo de estudios de Tuberculosis activities56.

GNTT attended the First National Meeting on Telemedicine held in Colombia in 2003. Further-

more it has been mentioned by several people57.

3.2.7 Facultad de Ingeniería Electrónica-Universidad del Cauca

Red Telemática para la Prestación de Servicios de Telesalud y Telemedicina was conceived for

designing and implementing a pilot project which allowed the provision of telemedicine and telehealth

services in the department of Cauca [26]. It was carried out between 2000 and 2001 by the Facultad

de Ingeniería Electrónica-Universidad del Cauca and counted with the support of Colciencias and

the Ministerio de Comunicaciones [113].

The project took place in Hospital San Francisco de Asís located in Guapí, in the department

of Cauca. There, it was installed a telematic network with access to Internet through traditional

telephone lines, which allowed the institution providing telemedicine services such as management

of medical services, digital arrangement of appointments, and access to medical [96].

55Contacts with GNTT-Universidad del Cauca, email No. 10.56Contacts with GNTT-Universidad del Cauca, email No. 8.57Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia, email No. 2, contacts with GIB-Universidad EAFIT, call No.1,

contacts with Hospital Universitario la Samaritana, email No.5 and contacts with GIT-Universidad de Caldas, call No.2.

http://www.retas.unicauca.edu.co


It was impossible to recall more information regarding this project since no contact could be

establish with Dr. Rafael Rengifo, responsible of the project and current dean of the Facultad de

Ingeniería Electrónica of the Universidad del Cauca58.

This project was presented in the First National Meeting on Telemedicine held in Colombia in

2003. In addition to this, it has been mentioned for several persons interviewed59.

3.2.8 T@lemed

T@lemed: Evidence Based Telemedicine for Remote and Rural Underserved Regions in Latin

America Using e-Health Platforms, was a demonstrative project carried out within the @LIS program

of the European Union. It took place between October 1st 2003 and September 30th 2006 [47] and

was carried out jointly for 14 institutions from different countries such as Universidad Santiago de

Cali, Universidad Nacional, Centro Internacional de Vacunas and Cámara de Industría y Comercio

Colombo-Alemana from Colombia and Fraunhofer Society from Germany to name a few [48]. The

later institution was in charge of the coordination of the whole project.

This project was created aiming at improving public health care systems quality for those people

living in remote and rural underserved regions through the interconnection of high level and quality

medical resources available in big cities to those of low level located in remote and rural regions [47].

To do so the project consisted in two subprojects, one in Colombia and other in Brazil. The one taking

place in Colombia: “Telemedicine for the diagnosis and treatment of malaria in underserved regions”

had two objectives: improving combat against infectious diseases in rural or remote regions in partic-

ular for malaria and improving primary care in target regions (i.e. dermatology, radiology)” [47].

The telemedicine system was based on a platform called TopCare developed by Fraunhofer Insti-

tute. This system consisted in installing a Topcare telehealth Kiosk in the remote stations and a server

in the reference centre. The Kiosk was made up of a PC running GNU Linux [102] and an application

for using the telemedicine hardware attached, composed by a video and audio solution suitable for

connection to different medical devices such as microscope, X-ray scanners [47] and equipment for

taking different measurements such as blood pressure, amount of sugar in blood, etc [48]. For every

new patient entered in the application, a report was created, and all medical data acquired: images,

58Contacts with Departamento de Ingeniería Electrónica-Universidad del Cauca.59Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia, email No. 2, contacts with GIB-Universidad EAFIT, call No.1,

contacts with Hospital Universitario la Samaritana, email No.5 and contacts with GIT-Universidad de Caldas, call No.2.


measurements, was attached, together with the patient’s symptoms [102].

Furthermore, the platform counted with a TopCare telehealth Server in charge of managing the

whole telehealth network, supervising every information transfer process in the network and storing

every patient’s medical data. Furthermore, it is in charge of keeping update all the epidemiological

data entering the network [47].

As it was stated above, the project defined two objectives for the subproject carried out in Colom-

bia, each of them corresponded to a different project: the telemedicine network Cali-Costa Pacífica,

where a big attention was gave to infectious diseases, concretely malaria, and the telemedicine net-

work Bogotá–Guaviare focused on primary attention [47]. Both of them will be described in detail

below.

Telemedicine Network Cali – Costa Pacífica

In this network three Kiosks were installed and adapted for following up of infectious diseases [102]

in between August and December 2005 [71]. The first one was installed in Buenaventura, one of the

most important cities in the department of Valle del Cauca with 320,000 inhabitants. The Kiosk was

installed in a health care centre specialised in malaria, and in 12 months of operation, 334 patients

were attended. A second Kiosk was installed in a militar base located in Bahia Malaga, were 500

people lived. This Kiosk attended 11 people in 6 months. The third kiosk was installed in a hospi-

tal located in San Andrés de Tamuco, one of the most important cities in the department of Nariño

with 150,000 inhabitants. There 94 patients received care in 5 months of operation. Furthermore, a

TopCare telehealth server was installed in the Centro Internacional de Vacunas located in Cali where

supervision and second opinion took place. In addition to this, Universidad Santiago de Cali was in

charge of the technical support of the network [47].

Following-up of cases was carried out according to the following protocol: first of all, patients had

to sign a document authorizing the telemedicine activity [71], then doctor filled out a pre-designed

report with all the information related to the case and sent it together with all the microscope images

containing blood samples of the patient [47]. Specialists checked the cases twice a day, following an

store and forward basis, each of which took them around 20 minutes [71].

In total 439, cases were attended in 12 months of operation, which included 2632 images, out

of which 2271 were from the microscope. A total of 280 cases were identified as malaria (117 de

p. vivax, 162 de p. falciparum y 1 p. malarie), resulting negative 156 of them. Furthermore, other


diseases were consulted, such as anemia (35 cases), urine infection (60 cases) and potential dengue

(25 cases). However, the telemedicine service only served for diagnosis confirmation: in 25% of

cases a uncertainty occurred, but only in 3 cases diagnosis changed [47].

Due to this project a repository containing epidemiological information from the Colombian Pa-

cific Coast was created in order to enable a better epidemiological vigilance planning based on evi-

dence. This network also served for improving skills of health care professionals working in rural and

remote areas due to continuous medical training [71].

However, this project also faced some problems such as power supply instability in some of the

Kiosks which caused unavailability of the service in particular moments, failures in the communi-

cation system due to the bandwidth was not enough for transferring some high quality images and

problems related to the lack of security in poor areas [71].

After the project, continuity tried to be granted through the Centro Internacional de Vacunas en

Buenaventura, or the Hospital in Tumaco, however, the lack of will from health authorities made it

impossible at that time [71]. Nowadays, a new project is trying to be developed in the area with local

resources, but it is difficult since institutions does not count with the economic resources, and the

communication infrastructure this telemedicine projects require. According to Dr. Yunda, technical

responsible of the network at Universidad Santiago de Cali, “if the state does not finance maintenance

of this type of networks it is difficult to sustain them since this projects do not make up the core of

business of private companes”60.

Telemedicine network Bogotá-Guaviare

The telemedicine network between Bogotá and Guaviare is a result of the project presented by

the Governor’s Office of the department of Guaviare an the First National Meeting on Telemedicine

held in Colombia in 200361. That project aimed at improving access to both basic and specialised

consultation in the area without having to go to a bigger city outside the department, located in the

Amazonian jungle. In its initial design it counted with 15 stations, being the reference centre the

Hospital San Jose del Guaviare [36], beneficiary of the T@lemed project. It is worth mentioning

that three more care centres belonging to the Governor’s Office plan are currently covered by another

telemedicine program: the agreement between Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional and

60Contacts with T@lemed, email No. 2.61Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, call No. 2.


Caprecom, for more details see Section 3.2.3.

In the T@lemed project this network only counted with two Kiosks, one in San Jose del Guaviare,

capital of the department. It was installed in the level two hospital existent in the city in December

2005, where three specialists in radiology, gastroenterology and dermatology were available once

a month. The telehealth server was installed in the Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional,

where technical support was also provided. Furthermore, another Kiosk was tried unsuccessfully to

be installed in Florencia, department of Caquetá [47], which was finally installed in Riohacha, at the

end of the project [103]. In addition to this, due to the project another radiologist and another der-

matologist were hired in the hospitals to attend cases once a week, improving considerably attention

quality [47].

Similarly to the telemedicine network described above, patients had to sign a document autho-

rizing the telemedicine activity and then consultation took place. In this project, experts answer

consultations once a day, with the exception of dermatology cases which were answered once a week.

Each case took experts in between 10 and 20 minutes. Although health care staff did not count with

experience working with computers, they found Kiosk very easy to use [71].

The whole balance of this network consisted in 1875 cases transferred in 12 months of operation

from a single hospital. However, 155 out of them were discarded due to files corruption and were

resent. 1602 from the 1720 resulting cases were radiology consultations, 84 were dermatology cases

and 12 cases were related to infectious diseases. Second opinion avoided 170 references to Bogotá,

which brought great savings to the state, since most people in this department belongs to the subsi-

dized regime, but also to patients who had to pay for their trip and accommodation expenses [47].

It is estimated that by avoiding one reference 5 million COPS were saved62. Therefore, this project

brought about savings around 800 million COPs. These savings contrast with the 3 million COP

invested in the installation of the whole telemedicine network, including operation costs [47].

However, sometimes the Internet connection did not allow online training of doctors. Further-

more, as well as in the other network power supply instability did not enable operation at all times.

In the economic stance, although hospitals increased price of examinations in a 125%, increasing a

lot its benefits, it did not allow covering expenses such as the Internet connection and efforts from the

hospital itself were needed [47].

This project granted continuity of service provision until February 2007 [71]. Then, the institution

62Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, email No. 4.


signed a contract with the Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, for continuing with the

telemedicine activities, due to the great impact it had and the satisfaction of departmental authorities.

Later, it was pointed out as one of the candidates of the Caprecom project, and since January 2008 is

part of it63.

T@lemed took part in the First National Meeting on Telemedicine held in Colombia in 2003.

Furthermore, it has been also referred by three of the people interviewed64..

3.2.9 Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá

The Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá created the Centro de Educación Virtual y Simulación in

2004 [24]. It counts with a telemedicine centre which seeks implementing novel education and health

care programs through the use of ICT. These programs aims at allowing Colombian population access

to health care services, and providing health care professionals tools for improving their medical

skills [53]. During these four years, the Foundation has carried out several telemedicine projects

which will be described below. Its worth mentioning here that the information showed in this section

comes from interviews with the responsible of the Centre, since it was impossible to recall impact or

feasibility studies due to it jeopardizes confidentiality of the company65.

Doctor Chat

Doctor Chat is an open system for synchronous and asynchronous free teleconsultation developed

in 2006 [116]. Halfway through 2008, more than 1200 consultation had been carried out66, however,

since authors were in process of writing an article for an indexed journal, no more details about

current situation of the project will be available this year67.. Despite of this fact, Dr. Valenzuela,

responsible of the project, indicates that the service, and health information demand through the

Internet in general, continues growing accordingly with the connectivity indexes of the country68..

In addition to this, data from an evaluation carried out after its their first six months of operation

63Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, email No. 4.64Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia, email No.2, contacts with Red Piloto de Teleasistencia Sanitaria,

email No. 9 and contacts with Fundación Cardiovascular de Colombia, call No.2.65Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 5.66Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 3.67Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 568Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 5


has been recalled, [116]. This study shows the results of the 270 teleconsultations occurred within that

period focusing on three variables: purpose of the consultation, specialty and origin of the consulta-

tion. The first variable showed that 55.2% of requests were about symptoms and diseases, and 25.9%

about medicaments and treatments; overall 93% requested information and 7% requested immediate

action. This is explained as a result of patients preference to get their doubts solved before starting the

tedious process of getting a citation with the general doctor, due to the long queues and waits patients

have to stand. Regarding the second variable, 91 consultations were related to sexually transmitted

diseases, out of which 35% were carried out by people between 18 and 23 years old, showing Doctor

Chat as an appropriated tool for sexual education; 28 of them were related to dermatology, 22 to

urology and 18 with gastroenterology. When analyzing consultation origin, it is worth mentioning

that only 2 of them were carried out from remote areas, whereas the rest came form Bogotá and other

main cities. Furthermore, the study shows other results such as gender of the consultant, 168 (62.2%)

were women, and satisfaction with the system, out of the 19 that voluntarily replied, 18 of them (95%)

were satisfied.

Teledermatology project

Along 2007 the Centre also created a teledermatology platform aiming at supporting resolution of

cases with an impact over public health in first level hospitals located in isolated areas of the country69.

However, due to legal issues related to health care provision on a telemedicine basis, it had to stop and

it is now being redesigned70. While the project was active, the platform was accessible to hospitals

located in the north of the country whose connectivity was granted by the Compartel program, and

29 doctors got registered. They attended cases in different categories, such as urticaria, erythema,

infectious and inflammatory dermatitis and skin tumor71.

Virtual Clinics

The Centre counts with two virtual clinics, one regarding pain and and another one regarding pal-

liative care72. Furthermore, another virtual facility regarding anti-coagulation will join soon the two

69Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 3.70Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 5.71Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 7.72Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 7.


existing ones. Their purpose is allowing interaction among specialists, between them and students and

among both and patients, for supporting the face-to-face attention provided in the Hospital Universi-

tario of the Foundation73. However, no more details could be retrieved, since Dr. Valenzuela assured

that he could get them but it would take a time not suitable for the framework of this research74.

Other Projects

In addition to the projects described above, three more projects are being carring out currently by

the Foundation: two projects for evaluating impact and cost-effectiveness of teleconsultations systems

regarding: a) suicide risk and b) sexually transmitted diseases in schools located in Bogotá DC; and

the third one, together with the GIB-Universidad de los Andes, for developing a methodology for

evaluating means of digitalizing radiologic images75.

Fundación Santa Fe de Bogota has also a big concern on virtual education and counts with a

program of the kind regarding medicine. More than ten online courses has taken place, with more

than 4200 students from the whole continent. In addition to them, five more courses are planned to

be developed along 200876.

Furthermore, Secretaría de Salud has authorized recently the Centro de Telesalud of the Founda-

tion as a reference centre [53]. This will allow the institution to provide different health care services

on a telemedicine basis such as internal medicine, cardiology, gynaecology and pediatrics, and taken

up again teledermatology services77. This event may serve as well for making use of results of the

PESCA project, which is currently carried out jointly with Universidad Austral from Argentina, with

the purpose of implementing a digitalized clinical history with support for communication with mo-

bile devices in first level hospitals78.

One more project was designed by the Foundation, but it never became operational: ARCAL

007. It was an International Atomic Energy Agency project presented in the First National Meeting

on Telemedicine held in Colombia in 2003 by the Foundation, its national coordinator. It aimed at

grouping through a telemedicine network all nuclear medicine centres both nationally and continen-

73Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 7.74Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 5.75Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 3.76Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 3.77Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 7.78Contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, email No. 3.


tally for optimizing existing resources and improving service quality. However, no more information

was found about this project in the Internet and, moreover, Dr. Romero, director of the Centro de

Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, institution in charge of its continental coordination, had never

heard of it79.

Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá presented its activities in the First National Meeting on Telemedicine

held in Colombia in 2003. In addition to this, it has been mentioned for one person interviewed80.

3.2.10 SaludCoop

SaludCoop is one of the biggest Colombian EPS, since it counts with more than 5,500,000 af-

filiated people and it is present in more than 900 cities and towns in Colombia through 13 regional

offices for covering 27 departments of the country81. In April 2002, it developed a Telemedicine Pro-

gram as a support to the great geographic scattering of their affiliates and the low offer provided in

several specialties in particular areas of the country82. Nowadays, the coordinator of the program is

Mrs. Rubi Patricia Arias, who has been interviewed to collect more information about this program.

The program offers health care services on a telemedicine basis in several specialties, but cur-

rently the most demanded ones are: specialties in pediatrics such as neuropediatrics, endocrinology,

gynecology, gastroenterology, and cardiology, and other specialties such as HIV treatment both in

children and adults, neumology, oncology, endocrinology and orthopedy83.

Telemedicine services are provided according to the following protocol: whenever a doctor lo-

cated in remote SaludCoop centre identifies a case he/she is unable to solve, he/she makes an ap-

pointment with a specialist in Bogota, where the reference centre, 104 Jose Piñeros Cortas, is located.

Once the appointment is arranged, the remote doctor prepares the case and sends the clinical history,

together with the relevant files to the specialist who will attend the case. Then, the specialist provides

attention to the patient in real time at the moment the appointment was arranged84.

79Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, call No. 2.80Contacts with GIB-Universidad de los Andes, email No. 3.81Contacts with SaludCoop, call No 2.82Document attached in Contacts with SaludCoop, email No. 2. Arias, Rubi Patricia, “Telemedicina Grupo Salud-

Coop”, July 15th 2008.83Document attached in Contacts with SaludCoop, email No. 2. Arias, Rubi Patricia, “Telemedicina Grupo Salud-

Coop”, July 15th 2008.84Contacts with SaludCoop, call No. 2.


Nowadays, SaludCoop counts with 22 health care centres. All of them are shown, in Table 3.7,

and as it can be seen, are scattered along the country85. It is worth mentioning that all 22 of them

are located in big cities, which facilitates the provision of real time services due to they count with

telecommunication infrastructure. On the other hand they are far from rural areas where people in

need of these services live.

The number of consultations carried out during 2007 per regional office are shown in Table 3.786.

A total of 21581 patients were attended. The price of this consultation is established by the govern-

ment according to the income level of the patient, and it ranges from 1,800 and 18,000 COP, (around

1 to 10 USD)87.

According to Mrs. Arias, it is difficult to know exactly how many doctors are involved in telemedicine

tasks, since teleconsultation depends on shifts and service demands, which are compulsory covered

for almost all doctors. Regarding patient satisfaction, Mrs. Arias defines it as a learning process,

where in the beginning patients showed great distrust, but slowly they got used to the way health

care was provided and nowadays they are very satisfied. Even so, Mrs. Arias highlights the fact that

patients from very remote areas were from the beginning very satisfied with the service, since they

had never before had the chance of benefiting from attention in particular specialties88.

SaludCoop participated in the the First National Meeting on Telemedicine held in Colombia in

2003, and furthermore has been referred by Dr. Romero and Mrs. Hoyos89.

3.2.11 GIB-Universidad EAFIT

GIB-Universidad EAFIT deployed a telemedicine pilot project in Medellín, between the Centro de

Diagnóstico Radiológico CEDIMED and the Centro de Resonancia e Imágenes CERI which results

were published in [55]. It was carried out together with the Instituto de Ciencias de Salud (CES) and

85Document attached in Contacts with SaludCoop, email No. 2. Arias, Rubi Patricia, “Telemedicina Grupo Salud-



Coop”, July 15th 2008.88Contacts with SaludCoop, call No. 2.89Contacts with Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom, call No. 2 and Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina-

Universidad Nacional call No. 2.


Table 3.7: Cases attended in Piss served by Salud Coop

SaludCoop High Complexity Medium Complexity Other Cases

Regional Office Corporative Centres Corporative Centres Institutions 2007

Antioquía Clínica Juan Luis Clínica Apartadó 482

Londoño (Medellín) (Apartadó – Antioquía)

Boyacá Clínica Tunja C. E. Duitama . 4513

(Tunja) (Duitama)

Córdoba Clínica Montería 651

(Montería)

Costa Clínica Julio E. C. U. Cartagena 658

Medráno (Barranquilla) (Cartagena)

Clínica Santa Marta

(Santa Marta)

Cundinamarca Clínica 104 Jorge Clínica La Mesa IPS Leticia 9174

Piñeros Corpas (La Mesa) (Leticia)

(Bogotá)

Eje Cafetero Clínica Armenia Clínica Pereira 1087

(Armenia – Quindío) (Pereira)

Huila Clínica Santa Isabel Clínica Pitalito 356

(Florencia – Caquetá) (Pitalito – Huila)

Clínica Neiva (Neiva)

Llanos Clínica Llanos 1815

(Villavicencio)

Nariño Clínica Los Andes 236

(Pasto)

Norte de Clínica La Salle 472

Santander (Cúcuta)

Occidente Clínica Cali (Cali) 81

Santander Clínica Bucaramanga 88

(Bucaramanga)

Tolima Clínica Ibagué (Ibagué) 1968


consisted in three stages: storage, data transmission and visualisation.

The first one was carried out through computerized tomography and magnetic resonance devices.

These devices acquired medical studies in a DICOM format and storaged them in a server. Data trans-

mission was performed through a virtual private network, where both stations communicate through

Internet via RDSI lines, which allowed 64 Kbps per channel. For communicating they used a software

called Terminal Service which allowed synchronous remote access to the stations, guaranteeing this

way security, integrity and confidentiality of data. Working stations located in the institutions, acted

as clients and could access the server for transfer and visualisation in real time, as well as download-

ing medical images asynchronously for a detailed checking. Visualisation was carried out through a

Java application developed by the group. It allowed to work with DICOM files, and to convert them

to other formats such as jpeg, tiff or bmp. An evaluation study was carried out by expert radiologist

from both institutions to assess diagnosis quality of images sent, consisting on sets of computerized

tomography, ultrasound, magnetic resonance, nuclear medicine and digital radiography concluded

that 1,525 out of 2,023 (75.38%) images had the same quality as the traditional ones.

This project was carried out in order to assess technical feasibility of the system, which was

wanted to be used in a similar project that would link the Hospital Universitario San Vicente de Paul

and the Instituto de Alta Tecnología Médica de Antioquía (IATA) through Universidad EAFIT. In the

future, this node would act as Central Node of an hypothetic Metropolitan Teleradiology Network in

Medellín [61]. However, this project did never become operational since both institutions broke their

agreement before the project started90.

Nowadays, GIB is working on the security tests of the teleradiology network. Moreover, they are

carrying out a project called MANTIS-GRID, for interchanging medical images using Renata infras-

tructure. This project is carried out, together with CES and Escuela de Ingeniería de Antioquía91.

GIB-Universidad EAFIT took part in the First National Meeting on Telemedicine held in Colom-

bia in 2003.

3.2.12 Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia

The Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia was created with the purpose of providing support

to those living in remote and isolated areas, and those hurt by land mines because of regional and

90Contacts with GIB-Universidad EAFIT, call No 1.91Contacts with GIB-Universidad EAFIT, call No 1.


national armed conflicts [119]. This support could be translated in teleeducation programs, providing

expert remote support and follow-up of patients. Furthermore, it could serve for carrying out a better

statistical control and, therefore, a better planing of health initiatives developed in the area. Statistical

information could be epidemiological and geographic, containing data about areas where land mines

were located and areas where armed conflicts were taken place. It would also serve to receive advice

from the International Rehabilitation Centre, a partner in charge of providing support for rehabilitation

of land mines victims [119]. However, none of these activities have been confirmed by none of the

creators of the Centro, Dr. Navarro and Dr. Velez92, interviewed about this issue.

On the other hand, the Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia has carried out an intense work in

remote education. Part of this concern is reflected in the course about Telemedicina y Simulación

Médica they have created for the Ingeniería en Sistemas y Computación degree in the Pontificia

Universidad Javierana (PUJ), where more than 80 students have acquired basic skills for controlling

different environments for telemedicine and telehealth simulation. This course counts with the support

of the PHO, ITU and the Organization of American States(OAS) [120]. The principal services bear by

the software architecture of the simulator are telesimulations of surgical specialties in ophthalmology

and othorrinolaryngology [120]. The simulator emerged as a Centre idea, however it was 100%

financed and carried out by the Destino Group and the PUJ. Despite of its use for teleeducation

purposes, it has not yet used in real cases93.

In addition to this simulator, and with the same purpose of integrating education and training, they

have also developed, together with Universidad Icesi, a system for supporting diagnosis and surgical

activities in paranasal sinuses, a tool for virtual surgery planning and, together with DITEC with

Universidad de Murcia, Spain, a system for image processing [120].

Furthermore, the Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia has taken part in the development and

implementation of a postgraduate course in the Universidad Icesi, which has allowed a new model of

international cooperation including countries such as United States, Canada, Spain, Argentine, and

Ecuador94.

The Centro de Telemedicina presented its results in the First National Meeting on Telemedicine

held in Colombia in 2003. Furthermore, it is present in both systematic review retrieved [72] and [115].

92Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia.93Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia, email No. 2.94Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia, email No. 5.


In addition to this, it has been mentioned for two persons interviewed95.

3.2.13 Hospital Universitario La Samaritana

In 1995 began a project for the creation of a telemedicine network in the department of Cund-

inamarca, promoted by Hospital Universitario La Samaritana, one of the biggest of Colombia, and

the Governor’s Office of Cundinamarca. This project aimed at implementing a teleradiology program

for helping to solve a problem of attention in the public health network of the department. To do so,

four hospitals located in La Mesa, Fusagasugá, Zipaquirá and Facativá, were provided with connec-

tion devices for communicating with its hospital of reference, Hospital Universitario La Samaritana,

becoming the first teleradiology experience in the country [57].

The project began due to an agreement with a Colombian Company called Vision Technology

Group (VTG) who provided the hardware needed for this project. The evaluation of radiologies was

carried out by specialists hired through outsourcing by the same company. In addition to this, techni-

cians were hired by each health care centre involved for taking radiology images, which improved its

quality, and optimized radiologists time for carrying out other jobs96.

The system worked as follows: the remote doctor requested a particular set of radiology studies,

including in the request his/her hypothetical diagnosis, then, the technicians took all the radiologies

requested and sent them to the central office of the evaluation company through a methodology called

Disperse Reading, using traditional telephone lines. Once in the central office, data was sent to the

radiologist on duty, who was in charge of the evaluation of the medical images. Once evaluation was

completed a report was sent back by fax to the remote health care centre [11].

According to Dr. Kopec, Scientific Manager of the Hospital Universitario La Samaritana form

1995 to 1999, the beginning of the project was not easy do to resistance to the technological change

from both patients and doctors. However, once they got to know the system, fear disappeared. In

deed, people from near villages started to demand the service97.

This pilot project, which finally began in May 1996, attended 2754 cases in 9 month of opera-

tion, 358 of which were emergency cases. For these special cases mean response time was one hour,

whereas, for the rest of cases, it was about 8 hours. These cases helped to increase billing of the insti-

95Contacts with Fundación CardioVascular, call No. 2 and contacts with GNTT-Universidad de Caldas.96Contacts with Hospital Universitario La Samaritana, email No. 5.97Contacts with Hospital Universitario La Samaritana, email No. 5.


tutions involved: in a 25% in the remote health care centres and 22.5% in the regional hospital [57].

However, despite of the system validation and the reduction of costs, since remission of patients

was avoided, factors such as the change in the health centres managers brought about the abandoned

of the project one year after it became operational [57]. According to Dr. Torres, current director of

the telemedicine group of the hospital, another factor was the lack of an application in charge of an

ordered billing, since although results showed to be positive, at that time there was a great feeling of

a negative economic impact98.

Nowadays, the hospital counts with a research group called GINIC-HUS [25], directed by Dr

Torres [63], which is working on a project for updating the communication system within the hospi-

tal for enabling digital managing of medical images. Furthermore, they are designing a project for

interconnecting via Internet three remote centres of the departmental network for providing again tel-

eradiology services99. In addition to this, Hospital Universitario La Samaritana uses Esoft systems,

which are described in Section 3.2.22.

Hospital Universitario La Samaritana participated in the First National Meeting on Telemedicine

held in Colombia in 2003. Furthermore, it has been also referred by one of the people interviewed100.

3.2.14 Ecopetrol

In [100] and [72] they mentioned a telemedicine project designed by Ecopetrol (Colombian

Petroleum Company) for supporting teleconsultation and telediagnosis by videoconference when

complex cases would occur in its facilities. It also aim at generating standards for attention and

prevention of emergencies and training employees. The responsible of the project was Jorge Alberto

Velez, current director of the Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia, who, in one of the interviews

held, pointed out that after working in the analysis and design phases, the project “was never carried

out”101.

98Contacts with Hospital Universitario La Samaritana, email No. 2.99Contacts with Hospital Universitario La Samaritana, email No. 2.

100Contacts with GIB-Universidad de los Andes, email No. 2.101Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia, email No. 5.


3.2.15 Vision Technology Group

At the mid-nineties the Colombian company Vision Technology Group developed the first telera-

diology network in Colombia, described in Section 3.2.13, and followed with an endless number of

contracts with several health care institutions in the country [43].

Among these projects, it is worth mentioning the one developed within the framework of a an

agreement signed with the Institituto de la Seguridad Social of Cundinamarca, which then, and still

today is considered one of the biggest teleradiology projects in the world [106]. In an article pub-

lished in Telemedicine Today in October 1997, it was the one with higher productivity indexes, and

with more telemedicine studies transmitted [11]. This project took place in the Centros de Atención

de Ambulatoria (CAA) which had the appropriate infrastructure for offering teleradiology services,

such as x-ray devices [39]. These institutions were also provided with a system for capturing and digi-

talizing images took from the x-ray machine, which was compliance with DICOM standard, and with

a personal computer with an Internet connection through standard telephone lines. In the diagnostic

center, placed in Cali, a server using Windows NT and a software for managing billing and delivering

reports was installed. Furthermore, the system also counted with a software for radiology reports

management designed by VTG [108]. This way, radiology services were provided on a telemedicine

basis with an availability of 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The project lasted 21 months, between 1997 and 1999, and began in the following CAAs: Alquería

– La fragua, Chapinero and Central located in Bogotá DC and Muña located in Sibaté [39]. Lately,

the project was extended to other CAAs: Kennedy, La Granja and Comercial y Bancario, located also

in the Capital, and the CAAs located in the municipalities of Madrid, Facatativá and Zipaquirá [65],

reaching a total of 10 CAAs. The way this project operated was equal to the one used in Hospital

Universitario La Samaritana, described in detail in Section 3.2.13. In this project, emergency cases

review took 3 hours and the rest of them a maximum of 24 [43]. Furthermore, follow-up and training

courses took place every two months, in order to solve deficiencies identified in previous visits [11].

During this time a total of 173,725 cases were attended. These data were also used for carrying

out a comparative study between the costs originated to do so, and the costs that this attention would

have cost using traditional methods. This study was published in [11] and showed that costs were

reduced in a 57%. Furthermore, another economic study with same purpose was carried out by

Finconsult in between May and November 1998. It concluded that with the same budget used by


VTG,130% patients more could have been attended11. Additionally to the savings and the increase

in productivity, VTG counted with a software which allowed them to analyze management issues.

Results from this software, which was installed in the following CAAs: Kennedy, Madrid, Alquería,

Chapinero and Central, showed that studies had a high technical quality (2.4 out of 3), and that very

few were rejected (1.3%) [107].

Thanks to these results, the system was extended to several places. ISS decided to contract VTG

services for the health centres of San Pedro Claver, Carlos Lleras Restrepo, San Blas, Guavio and

Niño in Bogotá DC [65] [72]. Furthermore, Governor’s office of the department of Valle del Cauca

department, contracted its services for providing teleradiology consultation in several cities such as

Tuluá, Cartago, Roldanillo, Sevilla and Caicedonia [43]. Moreover, other radiologic centres along the

country such as those in Duitama, department of Boyacá, or Villavicencio in the department of Meta,

also contracted its services. In addition to this, many companies worked jointly with VTG for devel-

oping their own teleradiology networks. That was the case of Radiólogos Clínicos with a network

among Bogotá, Manizales and Girardot, Mediagnóstica with a network among Duitama, Sogamoso

and Belencito and Sabag Radiólogos in Barranquilla. At the highest peak of operation, the company

counted with 25 radiologists providing service to 22 public hospitals and 7 private institutions [72].

However, according to Dr. Tavera, creator of the company, in spite of carrying out more than

500,000 consultation along 5 years of operation, the company could not survived the Colombian

economic crisis at the end of the last decade [106]. This factor, joined to a reduction on the prices of

traditional radiology services, made the company disappear at beginning of the century [72].

VTG teleradiology project is present in one of the systematic review retrieved [72].

3.2.16 Cardiobip Ltd

The telemedicine project carried out by the Colombian company Cardiobip Ltd consisted in a

cardiac telemetry network which began its activities in 1994. It covered a great area of the country

and provided the service to a wide range of the population, reaching, at its operation peak, 113 hos-

pitals and health centers along Colombia. Due to initial resistance from cardiologists who feared that

patients attended on a telemedicine basis decided not to come back, the system was mainly installed

in public hospitals [72].

For transmitting electrocardiograph images it used traditional phone lines and cellular mobiles


networks. Although both of them suited the telecommunications needs of the system, there is no

formal evaluation which supports this point. The use of already existing telecommunication infras-

tructure allowed low cost diagnosis about almost any heart failure susceptible to be detected by an

electrocardiogram. Furthermore, it allowed service provision 24 hours a day, 365 days per year,

regardless geographic and weather issues. Devices used were able to transmit any number of elec-

trocardiograms a day, with the only limitation of the time needed for the transmission of the study,

which took 3 minutes [72].

In April 1998 a group of cardiologist from Cardiobip carried out a study obtaining samples of

1000 patients. 682 of them showed symptomatology, and 318 were used as a control group. The

results showed that 31% of the studies presented arrhythmia traces, 30.8% presented blocks, 24.2%

hypertrophy and 42.8% showed a coronary disease. Out of them, 340 (34%) therapeutic and clinic

recommendations were made in order to solve the heart failures detecteds [72].

However, success decreased and at the end of 1999, out of the 113 health centres covered, 33 re-

mained, mainly located in Cundinamarca, but also in Tolima, Antioquía, Caldas, Norte de Santander,

Quindio and Meta102. Most of this reduction was related to the end of the contracts with the Ministerio

de Salud and the Secretaría de Salud of Bogotá DC. Since that moment hospitals and health centres

had to contract directly Cardiobip Ltd services. However, according to Law No. 100 level 1 hospitals

could not offer specialised services and therefore could not contract Cardiobip Ltd telecardiology ser-

vices. In addition to this, once individual institutions contracted its services, the economic situation

in the country at the end of last decade caused that several institutions could not afford payments103.

This lack of liquidity caused that in 2002 the company only provided services 8 hours a day [72]. Al-

though Cardiobip Ltd was bought by the Aviatur Group some years later104, the program is currently

out of service since the devices are obsoletes105.

Cardiobip Ltd. teleradiology project is present in one of the systematic reviews retrieved [72].

102Document attached in Contacts with Cardiobip Ltd., email No.5. Cardiobip Ltd. Informe del Gerente Correspondi-

ente al ejercicio del año 1999. Junta de Socios, March 16th 2000.103Document attached in Contacts with Cardiobip Ltd., email No.5. Cardiobip Ltd. Informe del Gerente. Junta Extraor-

dinaria de Socios, December 3rd 1999.104Contacts with Hospital Universitario La Samaritana, email No. 5.105Contacts with Cardiobip Ltd., email No.2.


3.2.17 GITEM-Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas

GITEM-Universidad Francisco Jose de Caldas is currently implementing a project called Gestión

de Salud para el Distrito Capital. This project is being carried out jointly by GITEM and Empresa

de Telecomunicaciones de Bogota, ETB, which is in charge of providing the infrastructure. It aims

at promoting integral attention in interconsultation and improving hospital resources management in

Bogotá DC. The infrastructure used will allow to provide other telemedicine services such as teledi-

agnosis and teleducation, and using other information systems such as medical history management

and teleadministration. To carry out this design, they performed an in-depth analysis of the commu-

nication needs of Bogotá DC [6]. No more information related to the project can be provided, since,

even after Dr. Aparicio, director of GITEM, offered to send me information, she never did so106.

GITEM-Universidad Distrital Francisco Jose de Caldas took part in the First National Meeting on

Telemedicine held in Colombia in 2003, and has been referred by Mr. Calderón, Dr. Castillo and Dr.

Romero107. In addition to this, it appears in [115].

3.2.18 GIB–Universidad de los Andes

GIB has been referred by several contacts as an active member in the telemedicine arena in Colom-

bia108. Therefore, contact was established with its director, Dr. Briceño. He pointed to Dr. Salazar as

the person in charge of telemedicine within GIB and provided me with his contact information109.

According to Dr. Salazar GIB does not provide health care services on a telemedicine basis since

it would entail registering as an IPS, which is not within University’s current interests. However,

they carry out several telemedicine activities such as the creation of a Telemedicine lab last year110.

One of the projects developed there, carried out jointly with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogota, aims

at proposing a methodology for evaluating means of digitalizing radiologic images111. Furthermore,

they count with a big research and development program regarding hospital information systems and

106Contacts with GITEM-Universidad Distrital Francisco Jose de Caldas.107Contacts with Red Piloto de Teleasistencia Sanitaria, emails No 3 and 9, and contacts Centro de Telemedicina-

Universidad Nacional, call No.2.108Contacts with GIB-Universidad EAFIT, call No. 1, contacts with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogota, email No.3 and

contacts with Hospital Universitario La Samaritana, email No.2.109Contacts with GIB-Universidad de los Andes, call No. 1.110Contacts with GIB-Universidad de los Andes, email No. 2.111Contacts with GIB-Universidad de los Andes, email No. 2.


medical processing112.

3.2.19 Facultad de Medicina-Universidad de Antioquía

TeleMAP stands for Herramientas Tecnológicas para la prevención y atención a víctimas de MAP

– MUSE and it is promoted by the Facultad de Medicina of the Universidad de Antioquía113.. The

program is within implementation process, but it will cover areas affected by the land mines conflict.

All the design process was carried out locally, which will allow a better maintenance of the network

in the future114.

As it figured in its name, TeleMAP addresses two issues: prevention and attention. The prevention

area is based on virtual education programs for continuous training of health care professionals and

community agents. This will provide a constant link with training institutions, which will improve

local people’s skills. By joining efforts with the other institutions working there: Servicio Nacional de

Aprendizaje (SENA) and Universidad de Antioquía, this will strengthen prehospitalary attention and

formation of professional technicians. This area is composed by the departments of Chocó, Antioquía

and Caldas, the three departments where more land mines victims are located, but it might be enlarged

to cover the department of Nariño115..

Telemedicine component of TeleMAP is based on a complex structure where Hospital San Vi-

cente Paul facilities, in Medellín, will be both the reference centre and the institution in charge of

coordinating all cases. Thus, all the decisions for allocating cases to the appropriated department will

be made there. Furthermore, in this hospital land mine victims be cared. In this infrastructure, IPS

Universidad de Antioquía will be in charge of the rest of the telemedicine services116..

Communication among centres will be based in a videoconference system with support for an-

other channel for transferring information related to the patient (electrocardiograms, vital signs, heart

112Document attached in contacts with GIB-Universidad de los Andes, email No. 2. Salazar, Antonio, “Telemedicina y

Sistemas de Información hospitalaria”. GIB-Universidad de los Andes.113Document attached in Contacts with Facultad de Medicina-Universidad de Antioquía, email No. 2. Facultad de

Salud, “Centro de Simulación”114Contacts with Facultad de Medicina-Universidad de Antioquía, email No. 2115Document attached in Contacts with Facultad de Medicina-Universidad de Antioquía, email No. 2. Facultad de

Salud, “Centro de Simulación”116Document attached in Contacts with Facultad de Medicina-Universidad de Antioquía, email No. 2. Facultad de

Salud, “Centro de Simulación”


sounds, etc). Whenever possible, broadband Internet will be used as transmission platform, when not,

other technologies such as microwave signals, mobile cellular phones and traditional telephone lines

will be used. In addition to this, TeleMAP is complemented with a program for domiciliary telecare

and psychology support of the victim and his/her family117.

This project has been referred by Dr. Velez118.

3.2.20 EIT-Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana

EIT-Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana was created through an agreement between two research

groups of the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Grupo de Investigación en Bioingeniería and Grupo

de Investigación, Desarrollo y Aplicación en Telecomunicaciones, for carrying out Red de Telemedic-

ina de Antioquía [72]. This project counted with financing from Colciencias and Ministerio de Comu-

nicaciones through the call for Telemedicine and Teleducation projects from March 2000. It focused

on health care centres, health care posts and hospitals located in the department of Antioquía and

aimed at interconnecting those located in the Aburrá Valley for better resolution of medical cases

through a videoconference system [43].

EIT considered many technological alternatives for the development of the network, and finally

decided to use RDSI due to several factors: it adapted better to the requirements of their applications,

it offered an excellent cost-benefit ratio and an easy management [43]. However, time past designing

the different applications for this technological solution and by the time the project was ready to carry

out evaluation tests, RDSI was no more as available as in the past and it was being substituted for other

solutions in the region. Therefore, as the applications were designed for this specific technology, it

was impossible to implement the network, which is now within a redesign process119.

Although Red de Telemedicina de Antioquía has been never deployed, it appears in the two sys-

tematic reviews regarding telemedicine projects in Latin America retrieved [115] and [72]. Further-

more it is has been referred by some of the people interviewed120.

117Document attached in Contacts with Facultad de Medicina-Universidad de Antioquía, email No. 2. Facultad de

Salud, “Centro de Simulación”118Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia, email No.5.119Contacts with EIT-Universiad de Antioquía, email No. 5.120Contacts with Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia, email No. 5., contacts with Hospital Universitario La Samaritana

, mail No. 5, and contacts with Red Piloto de Teleasistencia Sanitaria, email 9.


3.2.21 Asociación Colombiana de Medicina, Informática y Telesalud

Asociación Colombiana de Medicina, Informática and Telesalud is mentioned in the First National

Meeting on Telemedicine held in Colombia in 2003 [19]. Its president is Alberto Kopec, one of the

main actors within the Telemedicine field in Colombia, for instance he was Scientific Manager of the

Hospital Universitario La Samaritana within the period 1995- 1999 and he is the co-author of [72],

a reference document about Telemedicine in the Andean Region. In one of the interviews we held,

he told me he is “developing the Association for creating in Colombia an institution with no profit

motive in mind, where all actors involved in telemedicine development can access a forum where

interchange ideas and progress jointly”121. However, the forum is not ready yet.

3.2.22 Esoft Ltd

Intelligent Information Systems (former Esoft Ltd., and nowadays Bitakora Ltd.) was created

in 1999 by Didier Beltrán and Mauricio Parra, together with an interdisciplinary group of profes-

sionals aiming at promoting technology use by implementing last mile applications for provision of

telemedicine [45].

Among its developments, it is worth mentioning a platform called Gestión Médica, which allows

real time retrieval and handling of medical histories through an electronic bracelet wore by patients.

This device sends radio signals to other electronic devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA)

using a technology called RFID. When both devices are located close, the medical history appears

automatically in the screen. Then, the document can be read and modified in real time. Furthermore,

the system allows telepharmacy services, since once a treatment is written in the application, the

pharmacy of the hospital instantly gets the request. Gestión Médica also allows teleconsultation

services with other departments side the hospital [38]. It is worth mentioning that data travel through

wireless links located along the building which count with tools for guaranteeing integrity and security

of every transference [12].

In addition to this, Esoft Ltd provides training courses for the appropriate use of the platform,

since it has identified that the cultural change introduced by this platform introduces is very big.

According to Parra, creator of the application, at the beginning of the company health care managers

121Contacts with Hospital Universitario la Samaritana, email No. 5.


Table 3.8: Impact of Gestión Médica

Activity Gestión Médica Traditional method

expend time (min) expend time (min)

Medical Consultation 5 15

Transport of the consultation report 0 30

Time between the emission 2 25

of an order and its execution

rejected the system due to its novelty122. To convince them, they constructed a fake health care centre

where they showed how the system worked. Due to this strategy, they started providing services in

Hospital Universitario Santander and Hospital Universitario La Samaritana [38].

Operation at the Hospital Universitario Santander started in September 2007. There, the platform

interconnects several departments such as neurosurgery, general and plastic surgery, urology, radiol-

ogy, pharmacy and the clinical lab. This has provided several benefits to the institution, including

elimination of failures due to the wrong read of handwriting notes. It has also improved the provision

of accurate information which allows to optimize procedures and increase staff productivity. All these

benefits reflect on attention quality, which increases widely, and, therefore, improves patients’ quality

of life [63]. However, there are very few available data to confirm this, since, although Esoft counts

with different feasibility and impact evaluations, they are not available due to confidentiality issues123.

The only available one shows that optimization of procedures mentioned above is justified through

the the results showed in Table 3.8, which compared the impact of the use of Gestión Médica on the

traditional means of attention [45]:

According to Parra, the success of the platform comes from three factors: the innovation of the

product, the ease of use due to the graphic design of the software allows intuitive handling of the

platform, and the long training experience, which allows users to benefit quickly from the platform

advantages124.

Esoft Ltd. was referred by Dr Kopec125.

122Contacts with Esoft, call No. 1.123Contacts with Esoft, call No. 1.124Contacts with Esoft, call No. 1.125Contacts with Hospital Universitario La Samaritana, email No.5.


3.2.23 Dr. Díaz

Dr. Gonzalo E. Díaz offers several telemedicine services through his website [40]. Among them,

there are setting up of telemedicine networks through wired and wireless technologies, remote image

diagnosis, remote fetal ultrasound scan diagnosis, and telemedicine training on digital medical image

interpretation. No more information can be provided regarding this institution due to infructuous

contacts with them, which currently they only answer questions regarding support for setting up

networks126.

3.2.24 ITMS-Colombia

ITMS (Telemedicina de Chile) is an affiliate company of Global Telemed, a Swiss telemedicine

company with great experience in the field [67]. ITMS started its activities in Colombia in 2007, and

nowadays provides health care services on a telemedicine basis in 135 health care centres from the de-

partments of Antioquía, Cundinamarca, Risaralda, Quindió, Huila, Caquetá and Bogotá D.C. During

this period, ITMS-Colombia has attended around 30,000 patients in the following specialties: tele-

electrocardiography, ambulatory tele-monitoring of arterial pressure and tele-esperiomerty127. This

last service consists in analysing patient’s saliva looking for respiratory diseases. Both, this service

and tele-electrocardiographies, are requested by the doctor, who is in charge of taking the sample and

sending it to the specialist. For tele-monitoring of arterial pressure, patients need to carry a device for

24 hours which measures and records arterial pressure every 15 minutes. Once the record has been

done, the remote doctor sends it to the specialist [68]. According to Mr. Zeballos, director of the

company, for acute coronary events average response time is less than 10 minutes, while the average

for the rest of reports is 20 minutes.

It is also worth mentioning that, before starting providing services, ITMS carried out an evaluation

comparing between an electrocardiograph which provide digital images and a traditional one. Results

showed that traces obtained through both methods were so similar, that no differences were found

between them [44].

According to Mr. Zeballos, ITMS success in Colombia is due to the good performance of the

devices they used, mainly imported form Europe and Israel. In addition to this, he points to the use

126Contacts with Dr. Díaz, email No. 3.127Contacts with ITMS-Colombia, email No.2


of a macro-software developed by them which allow health care professionals to telework, as another

important factor for it success128.

ITMS-Colombia was referred by Martha Giraldo, the expert contacted129.

128Contacts with ITMS-Colombia, email No.2129Contacts with expert selected, email No.2.

4Analysis

Once information about all projects retrieved have been presented, it needs to be classified accord-

ing to the indicators detailed in Section 2.2.1, and assessed according to the scientific evidence of the

data found according to the nine-level categorization described in Section 2.2.2. In this section these

two tasks will be carried out in a project by project basis.

4.1 Analysis of the projects

4.1.1 Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom

This project contains, in its own purpose, a reference to one of the indicators detailed in Sec-

tion 2.2.1: (10) accessibility to a higher quality health care system. This is confirmed by two

facts: on the one hand the intense revision carried out by Grupo de Atención en Emergencias y De-

sastres identificating those departments lacking of key services for emergency attention. On the other,

Ministry data about number of patients attended after six months of operation, exceeding 3,000. In

addition to this, short response time (2 hours) may also have a great impact on the (8) system util-

ity. Despite these promising numbers, none of these data come from descriptive documents which

contains no scientific evidence and, therefore, any recommendation can be given.

Something similar happens with the (4) acceptance indicator. Although, it seems that being a

Government project, institutional sustainability will be granted for many years, there is no scientific

evidence which ensures that this will always be true further than the end of 2008.

75

76 CHAPTER 4. ANALYSIS

4.1.2 GIT-Universidad de Caldas

Despite the lack of commitment of some health centres managers with the teledermatology project

carried out by GIT, it seems to count with a good (4) acceptance, due to the agreement with the

Departmental Office for Health. Product of this acceptance is the proposal for extending the project

mentioned by Dr. Arbelaez. However, as well as it happened with the previous project, data come

from descriptions made by the coordinator of the project, thus bearing none scientific evidence.

Data regarding patients attended by this service, more than 2,700, and, therefore, regarding (10)

accessibility to a higher quality health care system, bear some scientific evidence since they are

part of a descriptive study, however, according to the specifications of Section 2.2.2, it is insufficient

for making any recommendation. Results also show that (8) utility of the system may increase due

to the decrease on the awaiting time for having the opinion of an expert (48 hours). However, no

previous data to compare with this assertion have been recalled, thus making impossible to assess the

impact of this particular project in the utility indicator.

In the description of this project, information about (3) ease of use also appears. In this case, it

makes reference to it in a negative sense, since the lack of follow-up from the university caused the

non continuity of the telemedicine services in many institutions, thus revolving around the difficulty

in using the system. However, as it is a subjective opinion from Dr. Arbelaez, it does not posses any

scientific validity. High rotation of the personal is also mentioned, but it can not be related to the (9)

feeling of isolation of the health care staff since no other data are provided.

The other two projects, teleradiology and virtual education1, are about to show results bearing

enough scientific data to make a recommendation. Unfortunately, none of them was finished by the

time this document took place.

4.1.3 Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional

Reviewing results showed in Section 3.2.3, one may assess that it counts with great (4) accep-

tance. ESE San Jose del Guaviare reflects this fact, where the Centre has been working for three

years, within three different agreements. In addition to this, according to Dr. Romero, patients satis-

faction level is very high due to what can be considered a great change on (8) utility, having to wait

two hours instead of three or four months. This has been also ratified By Dr. Gutierrez, who points

to an increase in the number of times specialised consultation in Clínica Leticia, from three times a

4.1 Analysis of the projects 77

year to once a week. However, none of these four references to the indicators described in 2.2.1 can

be taken into account, since no scientific data accompanied these affirmations.

Furthermore, it seems also clear, that the great number of patients attended within the different

specialties offered in 29 health care centres located in rural departments, has brought about a huge

impact in (10) accessibility to a higher quality health care system. These facts have also had a

great economic effect on the (12) national health care system due to the savings projects introduced,

according to what Dr. Romero and Mr. Bermúdez pointed out. However, as it happened with the other

indicators referred above, no scientific evidence accompany these data.

These fruitful results may be the product of different facts, such as the use of its own standard-

based technology, which allows them to manage and modify every aspect of the platform and to make

use of almost any device compliance with the international standards, and the great effort they devote

to training issues. Then, they may improve (3) ease of use of the system, and hence, increasing

the technical feasibility of the telemedicine platform they offer. Nevertheless, there is no scientific

evidence which allow making any recommendation. On the other hand, results showed above may

be product of its great experience which has allowed them to learn from errors happened in the past,

specially in the San Andrés-Leticia-Bogotá network. This project which counted with a great budget

was never applied mainly due to the fact that beneficiaries were neither included in the project nor

satisfied with it. The lack of a clear purpose was another factor for failure, since 230 billion COPs

were invested for Galeno, a software that was never really used.

4.1.4 Fundación Cardiovascular de Colombia

FCV is one of the most active actors in the telemedicine provision field in the country, as it is

currently operating in the more than 90 health care centres it is currently operating. Although this

might reflect an impact on (10) accessibility to higher quality health care system, it is not possible

to assure so, since due to confidentiality issues I could not have access to FCV evaluations. Similarly

happens with (4) institutional acceptance FCV seems to have regarding its great number of projects.

This can be related to the work they carry out for making beneficiaries feel part of the project, to

the programs of training or to the use of their own technology, but as there was no access to FCV

documents it is not possible to know the real reason behind it. Despite of confidentiality issues have

hindered the analysis of one of the most important telemedicine institutions in Colombia, one of


the articles published by them belongs to Category No. 3, which according to what was described

in 2.2.3, contains sufficient scientific data for making a recommendation. In [89], a control trial of

small sample was carried out in order to assess (1) effectiveness of ECG 1200, an electrocardiograph

developed by FCV, compared with traditional methods. Results showed that electrocardiographies

taking and then send to the reference centre by ECG 1200, allowed almost the same analysis than

those analyzed on site.

4.1.5 Subprogram EHAS - Colombia

The Subprogram EHAS – Colombia counts with an extensive evaluation of the EHAS-Costa Pací-

fica project. This evaluation considers many of the indicators present in this document showing differ-

ent results. One of them points to (6) an improvement of diagnostic capacity due to the introduction

of the system: the use of second opinion has avoided 0.5 remissions a month. This has had an (11)

economic effect on the health care centre, since each remission avoided allows savings around

250,000 COPs. Furthermore, the network counts with a great (4) acceptance: 69.2% of the staff

states it is very positive for them, while 30.8% considers it is just positive. This can be related to the

extensive participatory work carried out when designing the network, taking beneficiaries proposals

into account. It can be also related to (3) the ease of use of the voice system; 63.3% of the users

points out it is very easy to use. These results are reflected in the way health care staff use the system,

40% of them states they use the voice service very often. Similarly, difficulty they find when using a

computer and Internet, has brought about less changes than expected , since only 7.7% of them use

them very often. Overall, the system has had an impact on (7) the organization process; now many

consultations, both clinical and administrative, are made by these means, thus decreasing the number

of times health care staff has to travel to the reference centre. This, has also impacted their (9) feeling

of isolation; 45.2% consider their situation has been improved. Unfortunately, none of these results

can be used for making recommendations since data come from a descriptive study which bears poor

scientific evidence.

In addition to the results showed above, both EHAS-Silvia and EHAS-Costa Pacífica projects

seem to have had a big impact on (10) the accessibility to higher quality health care system. Health

care posts located in small municipalities, such as those which have hospitals in Timbiquí and Lopez

de Micay as their reference centres, only accessible by river, can now carry out teleconsultation with


them without having to move physically there. It is also worth mentioning the steps took towards

(5) economic sustainability of the project, such as the use of solar power and low cost devices, and

the way of sharing the Internet connection among all centres of the network. Sustainability of the

networks, is also being promoted through other small projects which reinforce training and boost

usage. However, there is no scientific data to confirm neither the impact on the accessibility nor the

feasibility of the networks.

Nevertheless, all these positive results are constrained by external factors around the projects,

which are, according to Dr. Rendón, public health care system deterioration in rural areas and hos-

pitals priorities, far from Subprogram-EHAS Colombia aims. Therefore, this lack of higher level (4)

institutional acceptance may hinder achieving better results on the long term.

4.1.6 GNTT-Universidad del Cauca

Within the two projects carried out by this group, ReTAS is the only one where data could be found

in regard to the indicators described in 2.2.1. It stands out the change in use of the project; when it

was managed by the group the network ran smoothly an staff were fully trained, but when it was

transferred to the Departmental Office for Health everything stopped working. This fact, which was

caused by bureaucratic issues, is related to a bigger problem regarding the transfer of the management

of a pilot project to the final beneficiaries when they are not fully prepared. It is worth mentioning

also the technical feasibility analysis carried out by the Grupo regarding (2) reliability issues in order

to assure compatibility with other telemedicine networks, such as those run by EHAS. However, as it

happened with other projects there is no scientific evidence which corroborates these assertions.

4.1.7 Facultad de Ingeniería Electrónica-Universidad del Cauca

Since it was impossible contacting the responsible of the network, there are no data regarding any

of the indicators and, hence, it is impossible to reach any conclusion or give any recommendation

based on Red Telemática para la Prestación de Servicios de Telesalud y Telemedicina.

4.1.8 T@lemed

As it was described in 3.2.8, this project was conformed by two different subprojects in Colombia,

both making reference in their objectives to one of the indicators described in 2.2.1, (10) improving


accessibility to higher quality health care system.

Telemedicine network between Cali and Costa Pacífica attended 439 cases in its 12 months of

operation. In all cases, teleconsultation was used for diagnostics confirmation, in 25% there were

uncertainty among specialists, but at the end, only in 3 cases diagnosis was changed. Then, the real

impact of the project on (10) improving accessibility to higher quality health care system was

very low, since in the vast majority of cases remote doctors knew already how to diagnose. What

this project allowed was a more precise diagnosis of malaria cases: all the 280 cases occurred were

precisely classified. In addition to this, the system also served for improving health care staff skills due

to continuous training. However, the system was not as robust as it can be expected and failed many

times due to power supply instability, lack of sufficient bandwidth or theft of devices. No details are

provided regarding the occurrence of these failures, hence, these references to (2) reliability can not

be considered. The project also had problems when finding financing for continuing its activities since

authorities were not willing to continue with the project and no other (5) economic sustainability

strategies had been developed to assure the future of the project. In any case, results showed above

come from a descriptive study, which as pointed out in 2.2.3 possesses insufficient scientific evidence

to recommend anything on its behalf.

On the other hand, Telemedicine Network between Bogotá and Guaviare, had a real impact on (10)

improving accessibility to a higher quality health care system, since in a year of operation at least

10% of diagnosis were changed. However, these data come from the same descriptive study referred

above, and its scientific evidence does not allow to make any recommendation. Similarly, it happens to

the rest of data referring indicators described in 2.2.1, such as a (2) reliability study showing that the

8.26% of errors occurred when transmitting files, the (11) economic effects on the health care centres

produced due to the avoidance of 170 patients referrals or the improvement on (7) the organization

process of the Hospital increasing the presence of dermatology and radiology specialists from once

a month to once a week: scientific evidence is too week to allow any recommendation. However,

the fact that the project is still on after three years of operation may provide an insight of the great

positive impact of this project, although no scientific evidence regarding to it exists.


4.1.9 Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá

As it was described in 3.2.9, the Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá is currently working in several

projects. Among all of them, Doctor Chat is the only one which counts with some scientific evidence

since part of their results were obtained though a descriptive study published in [116], which, accord-

ing to Section 2.2.2, belongs to Category 7. However, that study contains very useful information

for the company but possesses very few regarding the indicators considered in this study, detailed

in 2.2.1. Data showed that satisfaction of the users was around 95%. These results may be the cause

behind the growing (4) acceptance of this platform, increasing its number of users from 270 to 1200

in the last year and a half. According to the authors, the platform may have a great impact on (8)

utility, since it is used for solving personal doubts instantaneously instead of waiting days for getting

an appointment with the general doctor. However, as it was pointed out results come from a study

which, according to 2.2.3, possesses insufficient scientific evidence to give a recommendation.

The rest of the projects, such as teledermatology or virtual clinics, does not allow to make any

recommendation since no scientific evidence accompany the descriptions present in 3.2.9.

4.1.10 SaludCoop

The Telemedicine project which is currently carried out by SaludCoop, seems to have a great im-

pact on (10) the accessibility to a higher quality health care system regarding the more than 20,000

patients attended since its origin. Furthermore, according to Mrs. Arias, this has been accompanied

by a great satisfaction on the side of patients, specially from those living in rural areas. This program

has also brought about a change on (7) the organization process at the reference centre, since every

doctor has to carry out shifts which included taking care of teleconsultations from IR. However, as

it happened with other projects there are no scientific data to endorse these facts and, therefore no

recommendations can be made.

4.1.11 GIB-Universidad EAFIT

The telemedicine pilot project carried out by this group was carried out for assessing the technical

viability of a system they wanted to use in a bigger network. In this evaluation of technical feasibility

they guaranteed (2) reliability using a software called Terminal Service, which was in charge of

security, integrity and confidentiality of data. (1) Effectiveness of the network was also assessed: a


group of specialists analysed 2023 images transmitted by the network, out of which only 75.38% met

the quality criteria established. These data come from a descriptive study, belonging to Category No.

8, hence, it is no possible to give any recommendation since, according to 2.2.3 it contains insufficient

scientific evidence. In addition to this, it is worth mentioning that these results were never applied due

to institutions in charge of receiving the platform broke their relations, and, hence, wasted all efforts

carried out by GIB.

4.1.12 Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia

Despite being the institution from which the highest number or articles has been retrieved, no

evidence, neither scientific nor from any other mean, has been found to assess telemedicine in-the-

field activities carried out allegedly by the Centre. What it has been found is information about

several teleeducation activities taking place in different universities of the country, but no data have

been recalled allowing to make recommendations regarding Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia

activities.

4.1.13 Hospital Universitario La Samaritana

The first teleradiology project carried out in Colombia, had a great impact on (10) improving

accessibility to a higher quality health care system, since in 9 months of operation it provided

attention in 2,754 radiology cases. In this project teleconsultation was outsourced due to the lack

of human resources within the institutions involved to attend all the radiology services requested

to them. Therefore, due to this project, it was possible to control the demand, and attend a bigger

number of cases. In addition to this, results showed in 3.2.13 present a positive (11) economic effect

on the health care centre, since it increased billing between 22,5% and 25% in the centres involved.

However, this project also suffered the effects of being pioneer, such as early distrust from both

patients and staff, and lack of a managing system for ordering billing. The latter turned out to be

the key factor for abandoning the project, since at that time it was impossible to show the good

economic impact the project was having. Although, this last lesson could have served for drawing a

recommendation, it is not possible to do so because of information come from an interview an not

from a document with scientific contrasted facts to show that. Something similar happens with the

rest of positive results presented above; all of them come from a descriptive study which, according


to 2.2.3, bears no scientific evidence.

4.1.14 Ecopetrol

As it was explained in 3.2.14, this projects was never carried out and, therefore, no recommenda-

tions can be made regarding its results.

4.1.15 Vision Technology Group

Telemedicine activities carried out by VTG are probably the most successful ones in Colombia,

but, even so, it could not overcome the economic crisis present in Colombia at the end of the last

decade. Before that happened, two documents containing scientific data corroborate so. The first one

is a descriptive study published in [11], which conclude that VTG project with the ISS had a great

(11) economic effect on the health care centres, since it allowed a reduction of costs around 57%

when comparing its methods with traditional ones. In this study, it was mentioned that the system

provided attention to 173,725 patients from health care centres where prior to the project teleradi-

ology was not offered. These data showed the great impact VTG had on (10) the accessibility to

higher quality system. On the other hand, another study published by Finnconsult, [46], shows also

the (11) economic effect on the different health care centres due to the increase of productivity

and the reduction of costs VTG could attend 130% patients more than when using traditional meth-

ods. In addition to this documents, data containing less scientific evidence were found regarding (2)

reliability of the system: only 1.3% of the studies transferred were rejected. All data shown above,

together with several specialised training programs, provide VTG projects with great (4) institutional

acceptance, which was reflected on the increased number of agreements they obtained. However, as

described in 2.2.3 none of these sources of information contains sufficient scientific evidence to allow

making any recommendation.

4.1.16 Cardiobip Ltd

Cardiobip Ltd telecardiology project had a deep impact on accessibility to a higher quality health

care system due to its presence in 113 hospitals of the country. However, according to the proceedings

of its board of directors, an economic crisis along the country caused the slowly cease of its operation.

During the time it was operative, it carried out a study for evaluating the system. It was showed that it


helped (6) improving diagnostics capacity in 34% of the cases. Although these data seem to come

from a controlled random trial with big sample that, according to 2.2.2 it would have belonged to

Category 2, thus counting with very good scientific evidence, results can not be used to make any

recommendation since the source of the information could not be retrieved, and, hence, details of the

framework of the system were not available.

4.1.17 GITEM-Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas

It is impossible to make any recommendation regarding projects carried out by GITEM, since no

evaluations, neither about impact nor about feasibility, were retrieved during the search process.

4.1.18 GIB–Universidad de los Andes

Research activities carried out by GIB do not allowed to make any recommendations since no

in-depth data of its activities have been recalled during the search process.

4.1.19 Facultad de Medicina-Universidad de Antioquía

TeleMAP is still being implemented, and no feasibility studies prior to the beginning of the project

have been retrieved, therefore, no recommendations can be made on behalf of this project. It is worth

mentioning steps taking regarding to beneficiaries involvement in the project and development of its

own technology.

4.1.20 EIT-Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana

Although EIT carried out an extensive work studying different technologies in order to use the

best one for fulfilling the constraints imposed for developing the Red de Telemedicina de Antioquía,

the final election spoiled the future of the project. It was decided to use RDSI, and a lot of time was

spent developing applications for this technology. However, a change in technological trends made

this effort usefulness and, after eight years the whole project is being redesigned. Although there is

no scientific evidence to make any recommendation, facts speak for themselves, and more attention

should be given when choosing a technology which needs specific applications.


4.1.21 Asociación Colombiana de Medicina, Informática y Telesalud

As it was described in Section 3.2.21, this is not fully formed yet and therefore it does not allow

any recommendation to be made on its behalf.

4.1.22 Esoft Ltd

Esoft platform Gestión Médica, seems to have brought about a big impact on (7) the organization

process inside the hospitals were it is being used; it has modified the way orders are given to the

pharmacy and the way many departments communicate. In addition to this, Gestión Médica seems

to have a big impact on the reduction of failures coming from misunderstanding of reading orders.

It has also seems to have improve productivity within the hospitals, since times needed to carry out

daily tasks are greatly reduced and in some cases avoided. However, due to confidentiality issues

of the company, none of these facts can be confirmed, since, although they have carried out these

evaluations, they can not be shared.

4.1.23 Dr. Díaz

Although it seems Dr. Díaz has carried out different telemedicine projects, due to company policy

issues, it was impossible to recall their results and no recommendations can be made regarding to

them.

4.1.24 ITMS-Colombia

ITMS-Colombia is marked by the huge presence it has acquired in the telemedicina arena the last

year. Its activities in 135 health care centres around Colombia, where attention has been provided

to 30,000 patients, show its great impact on (10) the accessibility to a higher quality health care

system. It seems also to have a great impact on (7) the organization process due to the use of a

software developed by them which allows the specialists to telework. However, as well as it happens

with the improve in accessibility, none of these references to indicators posses any scientific validity

since both come from an interview. What possesses scientific evidence is the (1) effectiveness com-

parison of electrocardiographics methods described in [44], which, according to 2.2.2, belongs to

Category No. 3 and therefore contains sufficient scientific evidence to allow a recommendation, since


it consists of a controlled trial of small sample. It showed that ECG images produced by an Aerotel

system were similar to those obtained by traditional methods.

4.2 Summary of the analysis

In Colombia several telemedicine pilot projects have been deployed for providing services in the

following specialties: dermatology, radiology, cardiology, internal medicine, ambulatory care, malaria

diagnose, etc. A common feature to all of them is the lack of studies for evaluating their performance

and real impact. According to this, it is very difficult to replicate these experiences, since there is

no scientific evidences to back the promising results pointed out by the directors of the programs.

Such is the case of the teleradiology projects carried out by VTG, which attended more than 500,000

cases, or of the telemedicine activities of the Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional, which

counts with many years of experience and several projects which have allowed attending around

10,000 people living in remote areas in many specialties. The only two studies which, according

to Jovell and Navarro, posses any scientific evidence are focused on technical effectiveness of ECG

devices. Although this kind of studies are always necessary, they are not enough for making any

recommendation since they are not accompanied by other analysis regarding important factors such

as the impact on patient’s health.

Therefore, it is recommended not to carry out new telemedicine projects in Colombia which

do not count with a formal plan for evaluating its feasibility and impact, and finance only those

which contain a well-designed integral plan for evaluating the project in order to assess their

results and, hence, allow to replicate them.

5Conclusions

The systematic review of telemedicine projects carried out in Colombia has obtained several con-

clusions:

The search justify my assumption that the selection of Colombia as model is appropriate, due to

primarily that the large number of telemedicine studies that have been in operation for a significant

period of time. One of the factors claimed for its election was its dynamism at different levels, which

have been corroborated by the heterogeneous group of institutions described in Chapter 3. In that

group there are several members from the private sector such as Esoft Ltd or ITMS-Colombia, as

well as universities and departmental offices. It is also worth mentioning the key role of the national

government in creating a robust framework for the provision of health care services on a telemedicine

basis.

The extensive review carried out can be also considered both useful and necessary. It was neces-

sary in the way that it updates and extends earlier studies with new information and insights. It may

be useful not only for the recommendations that can be made due to its results, but for its detailed

description about twenty four telemedicine initiatives carried out in Colombia, which may help other

researches performing similar studies or be used for academical purposes as a reference document.

The search strategy used has been proved to be very efficient in the way it has served to find all

the telemedicine initiatives developed in Colombia. This assertion may appear very pretentious, but it

is worth remembering that a former member of Colciencias and current Executive Director of Renata

was consulted for corroborating every finding. In answer, she only added one extra institution, which

was immediately added to the document, thus including all telemedicine initiatives carried out in the

country. However, the search process was not as smooth as expected due mainly to two facts; the

87

88 CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS

difficulty of finding information through the World Wide Web, and the seven hours difference in the

time zone between Spain, where the review was performed, and Colombia, which made it almost

impossible to carry out any interviews by phone. Due to this fact, email was used for interviewing,

which, although slow, provide a reliable source of information.

Telemedicine experiences recalled can be classified in two different groups: those which fail to

fulfil its purpose, and those which achieved positive results. Within the first group there are some

projects that stand by themselves, such as Red de Telemedicina de Antioquía, carried out by EIT -

Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana and the network among Bogotá, San Andrés, Leticia implemented

by the Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional. The first one, failed due to a poor decision

when choosing what telecommunication technology, while the failure of the second one was a result

of a chain of mistakes. Starting by not taking the beneficiaries into account. Therefore, it seems that

a careful revision of the state of the art when choosing the telecommunication technology which will

be used in the project, and the involvement of the beneficiaries in the decision making process, may

help in the success of a telemedicine project.

On the other hand, there have been several successful initiatives that seems to have had a great im-

pact on the population. This is the case of the projects currently carried out by Centro de Telemedicina-

Universidad Nacional or the ones managed by GIT-Universidad de Caldas, which provide health care

services to a great number of people living in areas where the health care system is extremely poor. In

addition, there are several private initiatives, both in the past such as Cardiobip Ltd and Vision Tech-

nology Group, and in the present, such as Fundación Cardiovascular de Colombia, ITMS-Colombia

and SaludCoop, which have also obtained very good results.

Nevertheless, neither for the bad experiences nor for the good ones, is there no scientific evidence

to back their results, all measurements are simply subjective. Thus, it is impossible to recommend

any good or bad practice regarding telemedicine projects in Colombia for its replication in other areas

of Latin America. Therefore, the only recommendation possible to conclude this study is:

“Not to carry out new telemedicine projects in Latin America which do not count with a

formal plan for evaluating its feasibility and impact, and finance only those which contain a

well-designed integral plan for evaluating the project in order to assess their results and, hence,

allow to replicate them”.

AReference Framework

A.1 Definitions of the telemedicine terms used

Given the wide range of medical specialties and technologies which can be used for the provision

of a health service on a telemedicine basis, a definition of terms is provided in order to help the

reader to understand the rest of the document. Terms are classified in three different groups according

to the classification in [72]. These groups are time, specialties and medical application used in the

telemedicine system. Furthermore, the most common standards, DICOM and HL7, will be explained

at the end of the section.

A.1.1 Classification as a function of time

Classification of function of time makes reference to the moment when either the remote medical

intervention or the communication between involved agents happens.

Non-real time

In this mode the client of the telemedicine service is not directly communicating with the provider

of the service. It is known as store-and-forward because the provider stores requests from different

clients and at any given moment he can retrieve them and forward the results to the clients. Most

telemedicine applications use non-real time procedures since they are easier to coordinate, require

less communication infrastructure, systems are cheaper and they adapt better to real needs.

89

90 APPENDIX A. REFERENCE FRAMEWORK

Real Time

Real time makes reference to the fact that client and provider are simultaneously connected to

the same system which allow them to communicate directly. This mode allows a better interaction

among the two participants, which can be more effective than the non-real time mode. However, it

requires broadband services, which are more expensive and that both participants have to connect

simultaneously using the real time application.

A.1.2 Classification as a function of the kind of service

Depending on the way health services are provided on a telemedicine basis, there are different

terms of use;

Teleconsultation

A consultation is provided through a telecommunication system between a qualified Doctor and a

competent person. This consultation can be general or specialised and may have a diagnostic exami-

nation associated with it.

Telediagnosis

Diagnosis through telemedicine is the result of either a consultation in the case of patient without

physical access to the national health service or for a second opinion consultation. It the last case

it can be motivated as a result of a consultation between doctors or a new diagnosis requested by a

dissatisfied patient.

Telecare

This is the discipline that occurs when care is provided to patients located in remote areas through

the use of telecommunication systems. It can be used for warning people who care for people in

remote areas, for educational purposes or to prevent complications in ambulatory patient care.

A.1 Definitions of the telemedicine terms used 91

Telemonitoring

This allows remote monitoring of vital signs with equipments such as electrocardiograms, elec-

troencephalograms, electromyographies, arterial pressure, temperature, pulse, laboratory exams by

digital puncture for measuring metabolic diseases which require frequent control, eg Diabetics

Tele-education

Tele-education refers to the applications which allow remote education on medical topics either

in real or non-real time. Among the different tasks tele-education allows, there are: remote training,

continuing education, support to medical students and nursing staff, training through virtual reality

simulators, evaluation and feedback between teacher and student, etc.

Tele-administration

Tele-administration applies to health management systems for remote administration of processes

such as citation control, references, billing, inventory, strategic planning, etc.

Telepharmacy

Using different telecommunication systems, it is possible to carry out the prescription process

remotely, so dispensing, billing and follow-up prescriptions can be processed without the physical

presence of the participants.

A.1.3 Classification as a function of the medical specialty

As in traditional medicine, there are different specialties in telemedicine. In the following para-

graphs a description of the most common health services provided on a telemedicine basis are pre-

sented.

Teleradiology

Teleradiology is one of the most used health specialties provided on a telemedicine basis. The

radiologist does not need to have direct contact with the patient, making it very easy to carry out this


discipline remotely. In addition to this, some of its different modalities are already digital, making

process of capturing information even easier.

Telepathology

Telepathology works with images, either digitalized or from a video, obtained directly from the

microscope. These images can come from anatomic examinations such as cytologies, biopsies, or

autopsies. Furthermore, they can be accompanied by other medical exams such as blood or urine tests

to confirm the diagnosis.

Telecardiology

Through different communication systems it is possible to carry out remotely processes such

as electrocardiograms, ecocardiograms and record cardiac sounds and then transmit results to the

specialist for diagnosis.

Tele-endoscopy

Tele-endoscopy examinations are performed through optic-fiber endoscopy systems, connected

to a video conference or an image digitaliser system which provide doctors with the same view of

the damaged area that they would see if the patient was in the same room. Three main examinations

composed this specialty: Tele-ORL – othorhinolaryngology (ORL) examining ear nose and throat,

Telegastroscopy , examining throat, esophagus and stomachand Telecolonoscopy examining large

bowel.

Teledermatology

Teledermatology consists of remote consultations more than remote procedures. Within this dis-

cipline the dermatologist uses video conferencing and digital pictures to get a good image of the

problem that concerns the patient, who is in a remote health center.

Tele-ophthalmology

Ophthalmology practice can be carried out partly through ophthalmoscopes connected to video

conference systems for a better diagnosis of the back of the eye, which is very useful for the prevention

A.1 Definitions of the telemedicine terms used 93

and follow-up of metabolic diseases. The systems are very similar to those used for the endoscopies

Telesurgery

This term refers to surgery assisted by robotised systems which provides more security and preci-

sion in surgical procedures.

A.1.4 Main international telemedicine standards

Due to the wide range of telemedicine applications and devices that exist in the market, it is

advisable to have a common tool which enables communication in order to facilitate the exchange

of medical information and data among specialists. These tools are called standards and the most

common ones used in telemedicine are DICOM for exchange of information and diagnosis data and

HL7 for communication between telemedicine systems.

HL7

HL7 is a standard created by the American National Standards Institute in order to allow messag-

ing among disparate telemedicine systems within clinical environments for the interchange of clinical

messages. HL7 stands for Health Level 7 and it is the most recognized and used standard for this

purpose. The HL7 standard addresses issues such as the definition of the data which is going to be

exchanged and the timing of the exchanges [109].

DICOM

DICOM which stands for Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine is a standard created

by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association for facilitating the interchange and processing

of medical images in digital format. Thank to this standard different devices from different vendors

working with image archives such as diagnostic imaging workstations and image acquisition devices

can be interconnected into a common information infrastructure for image interchange and integrated

with other information systems [109].


A.2 Colombia

Colombia is one of the four countries which sprang up after the 1830 dissolution of the Bolivar’s

dream nation Gran Colombia, which comprised Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama, but

it was not until 1886 that the Republic of Colombia was founded. It is located in the north part of

South America, bordering with the Caribbean Sea between Venezuela and Panama, bordering with the

Pacific Ocean between Panama and Ecuador and bordering Peru and Brazil in its southern part[10].

Colombia is divided administratively into 32 areas and the capital district is Bogotá[28], the total

population is 41.468.384, with 28,08% in rural areas[35].

In recent decades, the Colombian political and economic stage has been influenced by the clash

between military forces and the guerrillas. The conflict has caused deterioration in the already difficult

situation of many areas of the country, especially in the period from 1995-2001[54]. This factor has

caused thousands of internal displaced people, fleeing from rural areas to the suburbs of the big cities.

Contrary to what would be expected in a country living with such conflict, poverty has decreased

greatly in the last 20 years, going from a Human Poverty Index of 12.8 in the early nineties[112], to

its current 7.9[111]. However, as it is showed by its current Gini Index of 58.6, the distribution of

income is far from equal, placing Colombia as second to last in its region[111].

Despite of the recent improvement in health statistics, Colombia still has to face diseases typical

of developing countries and tropical regions. The improvements hide the wide differences among

regions, rural and urban areas and social strata[93]. Malaria, with 150.000 cases per year, Dengue

Hemorrhagic Fever with an incidence of 18.9 cases per 100.000 inhabitants, Tuberculosis with 25,2,

or HIV with 10,62[94], continue to put the Colombian population at risk, especially those living

in rural areas. Furthermore, diseases typical of developed countries such as ischemias and vascular

failures both in brain and heart are top in mortality cause ranking[35]. Additionally, the rate of

violent deaths in the country is one of the highest on the continent. Therefore, the health care system

in Colombia faces a very complex and heterogeneous situation.

A.2.1 Health care System

The health care system in Colombia is governed by the General System of Social Security in

Health (Sistema General de la Seguridad Social en Salud, SGSSS) which is managed by the govern-

ment through the Social Security department of the Health National Council (Consejo Nacional de

A.2 Colombia 95

la Seguridad Social en Salud, CNSSS) [54]. This is stated in Law No.100 (1993), which defined the

normative framework for the provision of health care as a public right. This law introduced a radical

reform in the health care system and since then it has been compulsory to affiliate to the SGSSS in

order for the government to achieve universal coverage for health care [49]. Everybody within the

system has the right to receive a Basic Attention Plan (Plan de Atención Básica, PAB), which includes

services in emergencies, acute hospitalisation, consultation and medicine [72]. Two different modal-

ities of affiliation were created: affiliates to the contributory regime and affiliates to the subsidised

regime [13].

The contributory scheme is a Compulsory Health Plan (Plan Obligatorio de Salud, POS) for those

with the ability to pay. They have to enroll in a Health Promotion Plan (Empresa Promotora de

Salud, EPS) with a monthly payment of 12% of their salary in order to assure the provision of POS,

and enhanced PAB. The EPS may be chosen from a wide range of public, private and mixed plans.

Furthermore, those affiliated to the contributory scheme with higher salaries contribute with an extra

1% to the Solidarity and Guarantee Fund (Fondo de Solidaridad y Garantía, FOSYGA), which is used

to finance the subsidised regime [49].

People with a lower income or no ability to pay, who are selected through a system called Sisben,

are covered by the subsidised regime. Those on this scheme have to register with a Manager of the

Subsidised Regime (Administradora del Regimen subsidiado, ARS), who is in charge of assuring the

POS of the subsidised regime (POSS). This POSS contains the services included in the PAB plus the

provision of health care in a high cost illness, but this provides less health coverage than the POS

and it is financed mainly by public funds, either from the government or the municipalities, and from

FOSYGA [49]. In this way resources are channeled to EPS and ARS in order to balance the contri-

bution of each beneficiary to his or her insurer. This fixed payment is called the Capitation Payment

Unit (Unidad de pago por Capitación, UPC) and eliminates price competition. People affiliated to

this regime who need service at a greater level not covered by the POSS have to pay separately for

each service [13].

The goal of universal coverage with Law No. 100 was meant to increase the number of affiliates

to the contributive regime until it met 70% of the system by 2000 [54]. However, at the end of 2006

according to data from the Ministry of Social Protection, the number of affiliates to the contributive

regime was 34.27% of the total population (16.029.505 inhabitants) and to the subsidised regime it

was 42.99% (20.107.223 inhabitants) [84]. Thus, in spite of the efforts made to achieve equality in


health care, around 20% of the population still don’t have a health care plan. This setback entailed the

passing of Law No. 1122 (2007) which introduced changes in the way health care is provided. The

changes included: the creation of a institution called the Health Regulatory Commission (Comisión

Reguladora en Salud, CRES) which takes over from the CNSSS; an increase in the payment from af-

filiates to the contributory regime of 0.5%; a change in denomination of the ARS, which is now known

as the EPS in the subsidised regime (EPSS); and modifications to the way the ESE is financed [105].

Both EPS and EPSS contract the provision of the services contained in the two POS through a

network of Service Provider Institutions (Instituciones Prestadoras de Servicios, IPS). In rural areas

and small municipalities the IPS provide services through State Social Companies (Empresas Sociales

del Estado, ESE), the name for public hospitals. The ESE not only offer services to the IPS, they also

do so to those not included in any of the schemes, this is called “linking”. However, the ESE has

no more funding from government and its financing depends on the type and amount of services

provided [49].

The IPS and ESE are structured in three levels according to the complexity of the services offered.

The first level is mainly dedicated to activities related to health promotion and the prevention of dis-

ease. It provides external consultation and hospitalisation in general medicine. Among all public IPS

in the country, 84% of them belong to this level of health care. The second level of care focuses

on external consultation, general surgery, gynecology and obstetrics, internal medicine and surgical

specialties that do not require a high level of hospitalisation. 13.45% of public IPS are on this level.

The third level of health care is similar to the second, but also provides all surgical specialties, includ-

ing those which require a high level of hospital care. Furthermore, there exists a protocol known as

the ‘reference and counter reference’, which enables the correct reference of patients from one level

to another. This ensures correct management and makes efficient use of resources among different

health centres [5]. However, these institutions are not equally distributed geographically, more than

50% of them are located in three areas: Bogotá (26.75%), Antioquía (16.05%) and Valle (11.83%).

More than 70% of the IPS are municipally managed, which creates a big difference among the IPS

due to the unequal distribution of resources [54].

A.2 Colombia 97

A.2.2 Telecommunications Infraestructure

Nowadays, telecommunication infrastructure in Colombia allows the development of telemedicine

projects in many areas. Since the 1990’s the telecommunication sector has developed constantly in

Colombia, currently the main cities have a wide coverage of fibreoptics within and around them A.1(b).

There is a digitalised microwave national network coverage for providing connectivity through satel-

lite links to telecommunication service providers A.1(a) [72]. In addition to this there is a high-speed

network which interconnects higher education institutions, such as universities and research centres

throughout the country, the National Network for Advanced Technology (Red Nacional de Tecnología

Avanzada, RENATA) which is supported by the Ministries of Communications and Education [99].

(a) Microwave Coverage. (b) Optic fibre coverage

Figure A.1: Telecommunications Infrestructure in Colombia [41].

However, connectivity data from the beginning of the decade shows that most of the lines con-

tracted were located in the 23 major cities, leaving line density in the rest of the country at around

6% [72]. This can be seen also in Figure A.1, where a wide area of the country is not covered by any

telecommunication infrastructure. In order to solve this unfair distribution, the Colombian Regulation

Committee for Telecommunications started to expand services to rural areas to support education, se-

curity and health [119]. The plan called “The Connectivity Agenda” started in February 2000 and

consists of a set of strategic plans carried out in sectional programmes. It aims to get most of the

country covered by ICT, thus promoting economic, social, politic and cultural development [1].

Within the Connectivity Agenda, the Ministry of Communications defined a programme called


Compartel (from Compartir Telecomunicaciones, which means Share Telecommunications). This

programme was first designed in 1999 and became part of the Agenda in 2001 [125]. The main goal is

to allow low income communities living in isolated areas of the country to benefit from ICT with rural

telephony and Internet access. These services are provided by nine different providers through three

different sub-programmes: Community Rural Telephony, Social Internet and Connectivity for Public

Institutions and they are financed by the Communications Fund. There is a fourth sub-programme

which supports the maintenance and replacement of existing networks [97].

Within the connectivity for public institutions, there is a section assigned for health care centres.

institutions are selected differently according to the different phases of the subprogram. In the first

phase, which started in 2004, the institutions selected were among those located in isolated areas

with difficult access, which were already taking part in a telemedicine program. In the second phase,

which started in 2006, those selected had a real commitment to paying for the connection once the

free period of the program was finished [97].

The programme includes installation, maintenance costs, and a free period of connectivity, so

institutions only have to pay for the connection once this period is over. The maximum price of

these services has been fixed by the programme in order to guarantee competitive prices. These costs

have been set at around 5% of the total cost of the installation which was approximately 44.5 cop.

Furthermore, operators have to comply with the high quality standards required by the programme,

such as an overbooking factor of 1:4 and training courses and materials for the beneficiaries [97].

In addition to the training programmes described above, university students performing their so-

cial service are sent to rural communities for six months to provide training and technical support to

local organisations and individuals [125]. The government is also contributing to the cost of training

health professionals. Law no. 1164 (2007) enforces the implementation of a pilot program for con-

tinuous medical education through free virtual courses. This pilot has been developed in 875 IPS in

the regions of Nariño, Cauca, Córdoba, Boyacá and Meta [80].

To summarise, as of December 2007 the Compartel section of the Connectivity Agenda (2001),

relating to healthcare provision in rural areas via telemedicine to public institutions has benefited 793

out of the 2470 public IPS in the country, which represents only 32% [97].

A.2 Colombia 99

A.2.3 Telemedicine Legislation

The government of Colombia has developed telecommunication infrastructure over the last few

years to facilitate telemedicine provision, it has also carried out extensive work designing the legal

framework.

In July 2004 the Ministry of Social Protection passed Resolution 2182, in which the conditions

for IPS authorization for the provision of health services on a telemedicine basis were defined. To

do so, it defined telemedicine first: “it is the remote provision of health [...] with the purpose of

facilitating access to these services for the population who have limitations on the provision of these

services in their geographical area[82]1”. Furthermore, it defines the two institutions involved in the

process: Referring Institution (from Instititución Remisora, IR) and reference center (from Centro de

Referencia, CR).

The IR is “an IPS located in an area with access problems or without resolutive capacity in one

or more services, which is provided with the technology for transferring data to an institution with

higher resolution capacity for solving these needs[82]2“. The CR is defined as an ”IPS with the

technology resources and the resolution capacity for providing support [...] to one or more referring

institutions[82]3”. This support can only be given when the service cannot be provided with the

physical presence of the specialist[82]4. Furthermore, a signed consent from the patient is needed

in order to guarantee that he or she has been informed of benefits and risks of using telemedicine

services[82]5.

The Resolution also establishes the technical conditions both the IR and the CR has to satisfy the

authorities that they can provide the services contracted[82]6. Furthermore, they have to adopt all the

steps needed to provide security during the transfer and storage of data, since losing this would pose

a great threat to the process involving the care of a patient, and thus to his or her health[82]7. The

security is important in two different ways: forbidding access to non authorised people and avoiding

the loss or damage of data. The Resolution also states that “if any of the institutions cannot comply

1Article No.2, page 1.2Article No.2, page 1.3Article No.2, page 2.4Article No.3.5Article No.12.6Article No.10.7Article No.14.


with these specifications, it has to stop providing the service on a telemedicine basis”[82]8.

In addition to this, the Resolution defines the responsibilities of the provision of health on a

telemedicine basis. The professional who asks for a second opinion is responsible for the final treat-

ment applied to the patient, but the expert is responsible for the quality of the advice, which has to

include all the details concerning proper application[82]9.

However, this Resolution applied until its abolition with the decree 1043 passed in April 2006[85],

due to a change in the process for IPS authorisation for providing health on a telemedicine basis.

This legal vacuum was filled a month later by Resolution 1448[27]. This new resolution defined the

specifications for IPS authorisation for the provision of health on a telemedicine basis under the new

legislation, but for the rest, Resolution 1448 is equal to 2184 described above[83]. Currently, adding

a slight technical modification introduced in 2007 by the Resolution 3763[86], is Resolution 1448

which applies for regulation of telemedicine activities in Colombia.

Apart from creating the legal framework for practicing telemedicine described above, the gov-

ernment has included the telemedicine in the Law No. 1122 from 2007 described in section A.2.1,

which currently regulates the provision of health. In the law, telemedicine is referred to as the tool

for increasing quality in diagnostics and reducing costs when improving access to particular medical

specialties in those areas with limited resources. Furthermore, it points to the ESEs as the IR to be

equipped for the provision of these specialties on a telemedicine basis. Complementary the CNSSS,

through the Agreement No. 357 passed the assignment of 8 billions COP to provide services of

medium and high complexity through telemedicine in 9 departments of the country[80]. This project,

known as Caprecom, due to the name of the EPS which is coordinating the project, will be described

later in this chapter.

8Article No.7, page 3.9Article No.13, page 6.

BContacts with Institutions Involved

101

102 APPENDIX B. CONTACTS WITH INSTITUTIONS INVOLVED

CContact Information of Institutions Involved

Ministerio de la Protección Social-Caprecom

Person: Blanca Luz Hoyos

Position: Member of the group for Emergencies Atention and Disasters

Telephone: 0057 (1) 330 50 00 Ext 1713

email: [email protected]

Person: Luis Fernando Correa

Position: Coordinator of the group for Emergencies Atention and Disasters

Fixed Telephone: 0057 (1) 330 50 00 Ext 1710


GIT-Universidad de Caldas

website: http://telesalud.ucaldas.edu.co

Person: Dr. Mauricio Arbelaez Rendon

Position: Coordinator of the Group



103

http://telesalud.ucaldas.edu.co

104 APPENDIX C. CONTACT INFORMATION OF INSTITUTIONS INVOLVED

Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional

website: http://www.unal.edu.co/telemedicina/

Person: Dr. Eduardo Romero

Position: Director of the Centre

Fixed telephone: 0057 (1) 316 54 91


Person: Jorge Alejandro Bermúdez

Position: Telemedicine Coordinator

Fixed telephone: 0057 (1) 316 54 91


Fundación Cardiovascular de Colombia

website: http://www.fcv.org/

Person: Dr. Nadim Miserque

Position: Director of the centre

Fixed Telephone: 0057 (7) 639 67 67 / 639 92 92


Subprogram EHAS – Colombia

website: http://git.unicauca.edu.co/ehas/

Person: Dr. Álvaro Rendón

Position: Director of GIT (Grupo de Ingeniería Telemática)



http://www.unal.edu.co/telemedicina/

http://www.fcv.org/

http://git.unicauca.edu.co/ehas/

105

GNTT-Universidad del Cauca

website: http://www.gntt.unicauca.edu.co

Person: Dr. Edgar Castillo

Position: Former director of the group


Person: Virginia Solarte

Position: Responsible until 2007

Fixed Telephone: 0057 (2) 820 98 00 Ext.2154


Facultad de Ingeniería Electrónica-Universidad del Cauca

Person: Dr. Rafael Rengifo

Position: Responsible of the network

Fixed telephone: 0057 (2) 820 98 00 Ext.2125


T@lemed

website: www.alis-telemed.net

Person: Dr. Leonardo Yunda

Position: Director of the Group Telebio de la Universidad Santiago de Cali

Fixed Telephone: 0057 (2) 5183000 Ext 346 and 314

email: [email protected] / [email protected]

http://www.gntt.unicauca.edu.co

www.alis-telemed.net


Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá

website: www.fsfb.edu.co

Person: Dr. José Ignacio Valenzuela

Position: Director of Special Projects



Salud Coop

website: http://www.saludcoop.com.co/

Person: Dr. Rubi Patricia Arias

Position: Training and Special Programs Coordinator

Fixed telephone: 0057 (1) 600 10 50 Ext 1611


GIB-Universidad EAFIT

website: http://www.eafit.edu.co/EafitCn/Investigacion/Grupos/Ingenieria/GIB/

IndexGIB.htm

Person: Alvín García

Position: Director of the Telemedicine branch of the group

Fixed Telephone: 0057 (4) 4440555 Ext 407


www.fsfb.edu.co

http://www.saludcoop.com.co/

http://www.eafit.edu.co/EafitCn/Investigacion/Grupos/Ingenieria/GIB/IndexGIB.htm

http://www.eafit.edu.co/EafitCn/Investigacion/Grupos/Ingenieria/GIB/IndexGIB.htm

107

Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia

Person: Jorge Alberto Velez

Position: Director of the Centre

Fixed Telephone: 0057 (2) 667 75 80


Person: Andrés Adolfo Navarro

Position: Co-director until 2007


Ecopetrol

Person: Jorge Alberto Velez

Position: Responsible of the telemedicine program.

Fixed Telephone: 0057 (2) 667 75 80


Hospital Universitaro La Samaritana

Person: Jeffrey Torres

Position: Director of the research group GINIC of the Hospital Universitario La Samaritana

Fixed Telephone: 0057 (1) 407 70 75 Ext 10820 / 10249


Person: Alberto Kopec

Position: Scientific Manager of the Hospital 1995-1999



Vision Technology Group

website: www.bernardotavera.com

Person: Bernardo Tavera

Position: Director of the Company


CardioBip Ltda

Person: Jean Claude Bessudo

Position: Former Director of the company


GITEM-Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas

website: http://gemini.udistrital.edu.co/comunidad/grupos/gitem

Person: Lilia Edith Aparicio Pico

Position: Director of the Research Group

Fixed Telephones: 0057 (1) 3239300 Ext 2405 and 2500


GIB-Universidad de los Andes

website: http://ingbiomedica.uniandes.edu.co/

Person: Antonio Jose Salazar

Position: Director of the telemedicine branch of the group

Fixed Telephone: 0057 (1) 339 4949 Ext 3360

www.bernardotavera.com

http://gemini.udistrital.edu.co/comunidad/grupos/gitem

http://ingbiomedica.uniandes.edu.co/

109


Faculty of Medicine-Universidad de Antioquía

Person: Jorge Iván López Jaramillo

Position: Director of the program

Fixed Telephone: 0057 (4) 219 219 6045


EIT-de la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana

website: www.upb.co/eit/

Former Responsibles:

Person: Sergio Mejia M.


Person: Oscar J. Cardona Villegas

Fixed Telephone: 0057 (4) 415 90 20 Ext. 9595


Current Responsibles:

Person: Dr. John Bustamante Osorno


Person: Ing. Diego Cuartas Ramírez


www.upb.co/eit/


Asociación Colombiana Medicina Informática y Telesalud

Person: Alberto Kopec

Position: President of the Association


Esoft Ltda

website: www.esoftltda.com

Person: Carlos Mauricio Parra

Position: Projects Director

Fixex Telephone: 0057 (1) 450 2599


Dr. Díaz

website: www.drgdiaz.com

Person: Gonzalo E. Díaz Murillo

Position: Company Director

Fixex Telephone: 0057 (1) 540 2794


ITMS-Comlombia

website:www.itms.cl

Person: Patricio Zeballos S.

www.esoftltda.com

www.drgdiaz.com

www.itms.cl

111

Position: Company Director


Expert

Person: Martha I.Giraldo Jaramillo

Position: Renata Executive Director

Fixex Telephone: 0057 (1) 6258 480 ext. 5002 (No. 130)


DGlossary

Asociación Colombiana de Medicina, Infomática y Telesalud: Colombian Association for Medicine

Informatics and Telehealth.

Cámara de Industría y Comercio Colombo-Alemana: German-Colombian Chamber of Indsutry

and Commerce.

Centros de Ateneción de Ambulatoria: Centres for Ambulatory Attention.

Centro de Diagnóstico Radiológico: Centre of Radiologic Diagnosis.

Centro de Educación Virtual y Simulación: Centre of Virtual Education and Simulation.

Centro de Resonancia e Imágenes: Centre of Resonance and Images.

Centro de Telemedicina de Colombia: Telemedicine Centre of Colombia.

Centro de Telemedicina-Universidad Nacional: Telemedicine Centre-National University.

Centro de Telesalud: Centre of Telehealth.

Centro Internacional de Vacunas: International Vacunation Centre.

Enlace Hispano Americano de Salud: Hispanic American Link for Health.

Equipo Interdisciplinario de Telemedicina (EIT) - Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana: Telemedicine

Interdisciplinary Team-University Pontificia Bolivariana.

Escuela de Ingeniería de Antioquía: Engineering School of Antioquía.

Eventos Catastróficos y Accidentes de Tráfico: Catastrophic Events and Transport Accidents.

Facultad de Ingeniería Electrónica-Universidad del Cauca: Faculty of Electronic Engineering-

University of Cauca.

Facultad de Medicina-Universidad de Antioquía: Faculty of Telemedicine-University of Antio-

quía.

Facultad de las Ciencias de la Salud: Faculty of Health Science.

113

114 APPENDIX D. GLOSSARY

Fundación Cardiovascular de Colombia: Cardiovascular Foundation of Colombia.

Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá: Santa Fe de Bogotá Foundation.

Gestión de Salud para el Distrito Capital: Health Management for the Capital District.

Gestión Médica: Medical Management.

Grupo de Atención en Emergencias y Desastres: Group for Attention in Emergencies and Disas-

ters.

Grupo de estudios de Tuberculosis: Group of Studies about Tuberculosis.

Grupo de I+D en Nuevas Tecnologías en Telecomunicaciones (GNTT) -Universidad del Cauca:

Research and Development Group of New Technologies in Telecommunications-Univeristy of Cauca.

Grupo de Ingeniería Biomédica (GIB)-Universidad de los Andes: Group of Biomedical Engineer-

ing.

Grupo de Ingeniería Telemática: Group of Telematic Engineering.

Grupo de Investigación en Bioingeniería: Research Group of BioEngineering.

Grupo de Investigación en Bioingeniería (GIB)-Universidad EAFIT: Research Group of BioEngi-

neering (GIB)- University EAFIT.

Grupo de Investigación en Ingenería Clínica – Hospital Universitario La Samaritana: Research

Group of Clinical Engineering - University Hospital La Samaritana.

Grupo de Investigación en Telemedicina (GITEM)-Universidad Distrital Francisco Jose de Cal-

das: Research Group of Telemedicine (GITEM)-Distrital University Francisco Jose de Caldas.

Grupo de Investigación en Telesalud (GIT)-Universidad de Caldas: Research Group of Telehealth-

University of Caldas.

Grupo de Investigación, Desarrollo y Aplicación en Telecomunicaciones: Group for Research,

Development, and Appication of Telecommunications.

Grupo de Sociedad y Salud: Group of Sociecty and Health.

Grupo de Tecnologías de la Información: Group of Information Technologies.

Herramientas Tecnológicas para la prevención y atención a víctimas de MAP – MUSE: Techni-

cal tools for prevention and attention of land mines victims.

Ingeniería en Sistemas y Computación: Systems Engineering and Computation.

Instituto de Alta Tecnología Médica de Antioquia: Medical High Technology Institute of Antio-

quía.

Institituto de la Seguridad Social: Social Security Institute.

115

Ministerio de la Protección Social: Ministry of Social Protection.

Ministerio de Comunicaciones: Ministry of Communications.

Programa de Investigación y Desarrollo en Redes de Acceso Universal para la teleducación y la

telemedicina: Research and Devlopment Program about Univeral Access Networks for Teleducation

and Telemedicina.

Programa Galaxia: Galaxy Program.

Red de Telemedicina de Antioquía: Telemedicine Network of Antioquía.

Red Piloto de Teleasistencia Sanitaria (ReTAS): Pilot Network of Sanitary Telecare.

Red Telemática para la Prestación de Servicios de Telesalud y Telemedicina: Telematic Network

for providing Telehealth and Telemdicine services.

Secretaría de Salud: Secretrariat for Health.

Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje: National Learning Service.

Telemedicina y Simulación Médica: Telemedicine and Medical Simulation.

116 APPENDIX D. GLOSSARY

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